Bucharest’s taxi drivers have a poor reputation. They are generally thought of as rip-off merchants with a love of manele who don’t have the foggiest idea where it is they are going.
In fact, though there are still nasty drivers out there ready to use all sorts of cunning to part the naïve, the foreign and the provincial from his or her money, the vast majority of Bucharest’s dodgier taxis have long since disappeared. Only those who don’t read these words of wisdom from Bucharest In Your Pocket need worry about losing their shirts.
Yet the accusation that Bucharest’s taxi drivers haven’t the foggiest where it is they are going is one that does indeed generally stand up to scrutiny.
Unless you are headed for a well-known street or landmark, chances are the address you give your driver as you climb into a Bucharest taxi will be met with a clueless look and the words ‘unde vine?’ (Where’s that?)
The driver will then spend ten minutes trying to find the street in his Indexul Strazilor (A-Z) or – more commonly these days – on his GPS.
A taxi driver using GPS is like a history teacher using Google to find out in which year World War II began: just wrong.
A history teacher should know a little about important historical events. A taxi driver worth the name should not need a GPS device. Knowing the way to every street in town is simply part of the job.
It’s time to ban GPS devices in Bucharest’s taxis, and time to introduce a London-style Knowledge exam. After all, there is now evidence it makes your brain bigger…
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
The thing that I think should be banned is obsessively religious taxi drivers who insist on doing that whole “crossing yourself 3 times everytime you pass a church” Orthodox thing. That’s fine if you’re walking down the street, but if you’re barrelling along, weaving in and out of mental traffic and passing aforementioned churches every few seconds, it’s not only taking religious ritual to ludicrous extremes, but it’s also fucking dangerous.
Would have agreed with you Craig three weeks ago, that taxis here are OK. But recently I’ve had really bad experience. Examples:
1) Wanted to go from Piata Victoriei to Gara de Nord. Drivers refused to take us there unless we pay 20 lei. Reason – we had suitcases. I know that 20 lei is not much, but if the real price for this distance is 5-7 ?!?
2) Friends left us and we ordered a cab. When we named Otopeni airport as destination he refused to go there. Reason – he has to drive back with empty cab
3) Yesterday I arrived from London to Baneasa airport. There were plenty of 1.39 l/km and 1.40 l/km taxis. But they refused to take us to near Arc de Triumph for regular fee. 20€ was their price whereas ~10 lei is normal for that
No tip to taxis in Bucharest from my side anymore
In the good old pre-crisis days, one company brought foreign drivers to Bucharest (cheaper and non-caucasian, let’s say). It was funny how they didn’t even speak Romanian, not to mention knowing their way around.
I don’t mind when a driver doesn’t know the way, it’s actually funny to show them around every once in a while. But that’s probably because I do know the city.
With the arrival of GPS, the Knowledge is a vestigial, socially useless skill. Its only role is to maintain a closed-shop style stranglehold over the profession and shield it from competition, allowing it to charge extortionate fares. The cousin of a close friend of mine is a cabbie — pure-blood Cockney geezer who swans around in chavtastic regalia. He makes more money than anyone else in the family who actually went to school — in fact, he can afford to work part-time, which allows him to go on — yes — GOLFING holidays. (When in every NORMAL country taxi drivers are fresh-off-the-boat South Asians at the bottom of the social pile!)
How dare taxi drivers go on golfing holidays. The thought of these oiks going abroad. A disgrace!
Following your logic, in the age of Google teachers should be made redundant and we should just hire cheap Asian labour to supervise kids while they surf the net at school all day.
They can take all the holidays they want AS LONG AS they don’t charge me more than the price of a whole night out just to travel back home within Zone 2. There is no reason why I should fund the lavish liftestyles of a closed-shop, low-skilled, competition-free profession whose only claim to greatness is to have memorised the bloody A to Z (“But I ain’t goin’ there, mate, it’s off my route.”)
Following your logic, perhaps we should revert to human-traction rick-shaws, for that irreplaceable, unmitigated, community-enhancing sense of human contact and ancestral wisdom? Why stop at junking GPS? Junk the whole of technology! Why have machines for farming? Humans should never lose the technique of ploughing fields by hand. Ground zero, dude!
I’m also fascinated by this notion that a senior government minister like Elena Udrea — her merits or faults are irelevant here — should not be allowed to own a posh handbag, but taxi drivers should live out of the pages of How To Spend It magazine.
The Asian labour comment was tongue-in-cheek, by the way — I thought you would see that.
Sorry, I don’t do irony. And I am indeed a self-confessed Luddite. I would close down the internet if it were up to me.
As for Udrea’s handbags, the point is not that she should not be allowed to buy them, the point is that turning up to meetings to discuss chopping Romania’s smallest pensions with a €10,000 handbag on your arm is just a little, well, wrong.
C’mon, this is ridiculous!
Maybe we should make a University too for taxi drivers…
I don’t think a driver should know all the streets in Bucharest. There are a lot of streets, alleys, entrances, it’s not like New York where the layout is square…
In my opinion a taxi driver should be a non-smoker, should behave well to customers and [very important!!] he should always have change, just in case the client doesn’t have.
As for the knowledge of the city, he should know the most important landmarks like hotels, restaurants, touristic objectives, business objectives etc… I do agree however that he should remember or even write down a new landmark which he didn’t know but happens to see. That’s what I do and I’m not a taxi driver.
As for the GPS devices, I would make them compulsory in every cab. It’s obvious they were meant for drivers’ use, if a guy who drives 12/24 doesn’t use one then who was the device meant for?!
Change! Oh yes!
If taxi drivers were indeed obliged to have change then I would happily let them off any other requirements.
Bucharest taxi drivers are the worst I have ever encountered. I yelled at one one time for trying to rip me off and he through a full cup of soda on me out the window as I got out. Another time I didn’t have the exact change and the guy went ballistic on me, yelling and swearing at me. I then went to make change. Many times they have no idea where I am asking them to go. Yes, there is a big difference between Bucharest and London taxis. In London it is treated as a real profession. Bucharest is a very strange place on many fronts. I have no idea what people here are actually thinking regarding, well, anything. The place just seems chaotic, and, frankly, just plain odd.
Go with Meridian, they have the highest standards.
The Meridian management means business, if a driver makes any mistake (including arriving for a pick-up in more time than he announced!) they will penalise him immediately.
Drivers know they’re not joking with the company management and they will act professional. Except for the exact change part…
I don’t agree. A GPS is not only there to help the driver, but me, as a customer, too. I know (because I use one), that a GPS will calculate the shortest or fastest route (which, even if it can be longer, is not THAT long), and I would rather trust the GPS than the driver.
A knowledge exam will prove… what? That the driver knows the streets. So what? It will not insure me that he will take the shortest route for my benefit. It will merely cut the 30 seconds required to enter the address in a GPS device – and that is a time that I will gladly spend.
If GPSes would be banned, I would have to learn the streets too (or carry my GPS with me). No thanks, let’s keep the GPS devices in the cabs. For the moment, I trust the programmers more than the taxi drivers.