Travelogue: Taxis, taxis everywhere—stunningly, shockingly nice taxis

Travelogue: Taxis, taxis everywhere—stunningly, shockingly nice taxis

Vegas, New York, Chicago—step aside, because this is how you do transportation.

Lee Hutchinson – Feb 26, 2015 11:55 am | 127

The view from the back seat of a Mercedes C-class cab. Note the total lack of garbage and vomit. Note also the totally slick fare meter built into the rear view mirror as a factory option.

With Ars sending writers around the globe to visit GE research centers, we wanted our readers to share in with some of the experiences we're having during these travels. These blog posts are meant to convey some highlights rather than being an exhaustive account of our trip.

My hometown of Houston isn’t much of a taxi city. If you live here, you own a car; if you’re visiting here, you rent a car. But between trips to Chicago and Vegas and other places in the US, I end up spending probably a thousand bucks a year on taxis in various big US cities (and it feels like 50 percent of that is during CES in Vegas).

A taxi ride in a major US city usually means a ride in a broken-down Ford Crown Victoria or other fleet-class car, festooned inside with stickers, pamphlets, and flyers. There’s probably a plexiglass shield between you and the driver. The fare meter and credit card machine—if there even is one—look like they were installed haphazardly and are hanging on with zip ties and prayer. The ride can often be terrible, and there’s a decent chance your cab driver will be carrying on a conversation on his cell phone the whole time—or even multiple conversations on multiple cell phones.

Munich, by contrast, has the nicest cabs I’ve ever seen in my life.

I rode in a half-dozen of the things. All were sparking clean BMW 3-series or Mercedes C-class sedans. All were kitted out inside with leather and dashboard displays. All had the fare meter and other taxi accoutrements built into the rear-view mirror, presumably as a factory option. There were no plexiglass partitions between me and the drivers, and the drivers themselves were attentive, safe, and polite as hell.

After so many years in US taxis, it felt like taking cabs in Bizzaro World.

I also rarely had to wait for a cab, especially outside of the Hilton we stayed at. There was a cab line that had at bare minimum four or five Mercedes and BMWs queued up at any hour, day or night. Even on my last day, when I had to be in the lobby at 4:30am in order to head to the airport, there were cabs waiting. These drivers were actually awake and polite, even at that unholy hour.

The cab ride to the airport, in fact, was an experience all in its own. I tried my usual German with the cab driver and he responded in amused English (“Flughafen, bitte!” “Oh, you’re going to the airport? No problem!”) and we sped out of town and hopped onto the Autobahn.

Contrary to popular American belief, the German highway system isn’t a Wild West of unlimited speeds and insanity—the speed limits are tightly regulated and enforced, and the highway is chopped up into sections. The speed at each section is set dynamically and communicated to drivers by large overhead signs. Being so early in the morning, much of the Autobahn between Munich and the airport was unlimited, so I was treated to a 100 mph cab ride (that’s 160 kilometers per hour for Ars European readers, and I’m sure that doesn’t sound crazy to you). The fare meter whizzed merrily along as the Mercedes chewed up the kilometers and the driver gave me an insightful lecture about football and the Allianz Arena (which apparently changes colors depending on what team is playing in it).

The cost of that fast cab ride wound up being 55 euro—which worked out perfectly because I had precisely 60 euro left on me after the week. My review: A+, would cab in Munich again.