Topic: No wonder no one in Cincy uses taxis

[scottws]

I just got home from the Corner Pub in Montgomery.  The fare was $35!!!

I guess it's cheaper than a DUI, but holy shit!

[idolminds]

Taxis: we charge by the foot.

[Cobra951]

Very smart investment if you make the mistake of having one too many in Montgomery.  They lie in wait for you there when you come out of bars.  Just a heads up.  Nearby Kenwood is much safer for recreational drinking.

[shock]

I remember visiting a friend who lived in New Jersey.  She lived pretty close to NYC.  We went into the city one night, got drunk, and missed the last bus that ran to her house.  Our options were either to get a hotel room in the city (we were plastered) or take a cab home.  We bartered with a bunch of the cab drivers outside of the main station.  The cheapest rate we could get was 60$.  So we ended up paying $70 something for the cab.  She lived so fucking far.  Cheaper than a hotel in the city, but barely.

[nickclone]

It used to cost be about $35 - $40 to get home after a night of drinking when I got a cab. I eventually made friends with a cabbie, would give him $20 and he would take me and my friend home.

[gpw11]

Fuck taxis and fuck 90% of the taxi drivers out there. 

That is all.

[Quemaqua]

I have taken a taxi exactly once in my life, and I wasn't drinking.  I usually drink at home.  Mostly alone, sometimes with a friend or two.

[ren]

Cabs are way too expensive. Especially if you live somewhere with a public transit system that runs at least some routes all night. A $3 fare beats a $30 cab ride easily. That's in Toronto. In Halifax where the busses don't run all night, cabs are reasonably priced so it's not too bad. Halifax is a small town where you can walk pretty much anywhere within half an hour though. In Beijing, I just took a 30 minute cab ride for about $10.

[Pugnate]

Hey is it just me, or does it seem like the vast majority of cabbies were cut from the same cloth?

[scottws]

Cabs are way too expensive. Especially if you live somewhere with a public transit system that runs at least some routes all night. A $3 fare beats a $30 cab ride easily. That's in Toronto. In Halifax where the busses don't run all night, cabs are reasonably priced so it's not too bad. Halifax is a small town where you can walk pretty much anywhere within half an hour though. In Beijing, I just took a 30 minute cab ride for about $10.

To say that Cincinnati public transportation system is a joke is giving it too much credit.  There aren't many options.

[Cobra951]

To say that Cincinnati public transportation system is a joke is giving it too much credit.  There aren't many options.

It's horrible.  I've had to deal with it too much.  Only if you're going downtown do you have a decent chance of getting a direct bus.  Even then, I had to walk the better part of a mile to the nearest stop, last time I worked downtown.

[ren]

Public transportation seems like a joke in most of North America. They offer very little service and constantly hike the rates so that it's not even worth using. Then they're surprised with low ridership and use it to justify even more rate hikes. If they could somehow just build a ton of money up front and build a cohesive system that's actually functional everybody involved would have far less problems.

[scottws]

The problem in North America is sprawl and shopping centers.  Our cities, for the most part, have grown and are growing outward, not upward like a lot of European cities.  Density in the U.S. cities stays about the same and just sort of spreads out instead of density increasing.  It seems each community has its own main shopping area so there is little reason in many cities to go to the actual city center unless you work there or are going to a sporting event or museum.

The only cities I can think of that are exceptions and have good public transportation systems are San Francisco, Chicago, and New York.  Notice that they are all large cities with large city centers.  I'm not sure if LA or Boston (also very large cities) have good public transportation systems or not.

[ren]

I don't think I've ever been in a medium sized city with a lot of urban sprawl. I always thought Toronto was too spread out but after looking at the wikipedia page of Cincinnati, I see what you mean. City population: 333,336. Metro: 2,155,137. That's nuts. That's half the Toronto urban population in more than double the space.

[gpw11]

You know what defines urban sprawl for me?  LA.