Rant
Alex Frew McMillan
There's one problem: they don't take you where you want to go. You'd think this was a key - indeed the only - role of a taxi.
Pity the poor tourist who has spent a little too long in Lan Kwai Fong and needs a ride back to an island-side hotel when the Kowloon-based drivers want to clock off. Every night, there are frustrated, slightly drunk faces at the Pedder Street taxi rank.
A cab is empty. Its "For Hire" sign is on. Yet when they try to get in, they're brushed off with a brusque, "No, no!".
And forget trying to get a taxi anytime near the 4pm shift change. Why every cab driver in the city has to switch shift at the same time is one of life's mysteries.
It is, of course, illegal for taxis to refuse to take you to your destination. In the smartphone age, I've solved my recurring late-night wrangle - "Central to Tai Po? Aiyah" - by snapping the driver's licence and threatening to report him.
I used to live in Pok Fu Lam, before the Bel-Air residents moved in. One night my wife and I had eaten at one of the new Cyberport restaurants and needed a taxi home.
It was a minimum-fare ride. The driver sighed, but it was too late. He had made the fatal mistake of letting us enter his car.
"I've been waiting here for 45 minutes," he complained.
"What does he want us to do, drive around to random places we don't want to go to, until he's happy with the meter?" I asked my wife.
We felt bad and gave him a HK$5 tip. He huffed and drove away.
