The taxi ride from hell: A data point for the rideshare debate

One of the arguments made by established taxi companies against ride-sharing companies like Lyft and Uber is that the latter's passengers are taking a greater risk because of the questionable vetting of the drivers.  Real taxi drivers are professionals, the argument goes, with proper training and screening to insure that they safely and efficiently whisk you from A to B.

To which I say: Bollocks.  I just had the worst ride of my entire life, and it was in an officially licensed New York City yellow cab.  It was so extraordinarily bad that I didn't tip the driver.  I have never before in my life not tipped a driver.  I was this close to not paying him at all.

It was not an obscure route: Times Square to Newark airport.  Any NYC taxi driver worth the title should know that route like the back of their hand.  Google Traffic indicated that except for the usual backup at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, traffic was light and we should get there in about 30 minutes.

I sat down in the back of the cab and it was immediately evident that this was not going to be the most comfortable ride of my life.  The seat had a loose spring (or something) that was poking me in my butt, and did the entire trip.

To fully appreciate how utterly incompetent this cabbie was it will be helpful to know that the usual route from Times Square to Newark airport goes something like this: you go west through mid-town Manhattan and take the Lincoln Tunnel under the Hudson river.  From there, you continue on route 495 to Interstate 95, hang a left, cruise for 20 minutes or so, and exit to the airport.  Easy peasy.  If there is heavy traffic on the interstate one might choose to take a different route to bypass the interstate, but as I mentioned, it was early and traffic was light.

The transition through the Lincoln Tunnel went smoothly enough, but when we got to the other side the driver suddenly took an unexpected turn and we ended up on New Jersey surface streets.  With traffic lights.

Now, New York cabs have plexiglass safety dividers between the driver and the back seat.  Some of them have holes or little windows in them so you can talk to the driver, but not this one.  So I had to shout to be heard: "Why didn't you take the interstate?"

It quickly became clear that the driver's command of English, in both transmit and receive modes, left a little room for improvement and communication was going to be a challenge.  At one point, the driver passed his cell phone to me through a little cell-phone-sized man trap in the safety divider.  I saw that he was running some sort of navigation app, but I am not sufficiently wise in the ways of Waze to ascertain exactly what was going on or how to do anything about it.  So I just resigned myself to the fact that this trip was going to take a little longer than I expected, and passed the phone back to the driver.

I pulled up Google Maps on my own phone so I could follow our progress, and it appeared that our plan was to take state route 9.  This was slightly alarming as there were construction warnings along a substantial stretch of that road, but happily it appeared that this was because the road was closed in the opposite direction.  Going North we would be able to get through with minimal fuss.

Or at least we would have done if the driver had actually turned onto route 9.  He didn't.  He sailed right past the on ramp and into the next little enclave of surface streets, from which there was no evident route to the airport at all.

I piped up again and asked if the driver realized that he had just missed a turn.  He allowed that he had, apologized sheepishly, and said he would make a U turn, which, in New Jersey, is no mean feat.  In fact we did not make a U-turn, but rather went around several blocks until we finally found ourselves back at the on-ramp for state route 9.  (During this time I could hear the driver on the phone with someone who was apparently trying to talk him through the situation to get us back on track.)

Now, to be fair, the road design and signage in this particular area were atrocious, almost as if someone had deliberately designed the place to be misleading so that they could hide in a nearby bird blind and snicker at the hapless drivers trying to find their way.  But this is not at all unusual in New Jersey, and if you're going to drive there for a living you really have to be able to take this sort of thing in stride.  Fortunately, by proceeding very, very slowly and deliberately, our driver was finally able to get us onto the correct road.

Alas, our troubles were not over.  By now I was watching carefully what the driver was doing to make sure he wasn't about to miss the exit for the airport, which is exactly what he proceeded to do.  As he started sailing by the off ramp I shouted at him, "You're about to miss the exit!"  But instead of veering to make the off ramp, he slammed on the brakes and stopped!  Right in the middle of the freeway.  A brief negotiation ensued, upon the completion of which we finally turned right and into the airport.

I micromanaged the drive to the terminal, and as I noted earlier, I did not give him a tip.

Because this driver was so off-the-charts atrocious I decided to report him to the NYC taxi authority, the organization that is supposed to be in charge of insuring that yellow cab drivers are more competent than the disreputable scoundrels that drive Lyfts and Ubers.  They have a convenient web page for filing complaints, but upon availing myself of this I discovered to my dismay that in order for any complaint to be acted upon you have to be willing to make yourself available for an in-person hearing.  In Queens.  Well, I live in California, so going to a hearing in Queens is not exactly convenient.  I went ahead and filed my complaint anyway (and condensed this story down to about three sentences so it would fit in the tiny text box provided for you to give the details of your complaint.  A few minutes later I received this helpful response:

Service Request #: C1-1-1546782941
Date Submitted: 04/06/18 3:46:51 PM
Request Type: Taxi Report
Details: Driver Report 

Your Service Request was closed.
Your report has been sent to the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC). You are not available to participate in a hearing so TLC cannot take any action against the driver or car service company. No further information will be available for your report.

So... no more taxis to the aiport for me.  I'd rather roll the dice with Uber.  At least with them if the ride sucks I don't have to show up for a hearing in order to give the driver a bad review if he deserves one.

Which, now that I come to think of it, not a single Uber driver ever has.

I would like to note for the record that I have taken dozens and dozens of NYC taxis over the years, and they were by and large competent and efficient.  This experience was definitely an outlier.  But it does undermine the taxi company's argument that Uber and Lyft should not be used because their drivers haven't been as well vetted.