Last week, I spent five days and nights in Cardiff. The connection Cardiff-Munich by train is basically an outrage and it would also have cost several times the price of a direct flight on BMIBaby. I did not want to demand this of my fellow travellers. So I de-activated my non-flying principle for this one trip.
Basically, you need no taxi if you want to go from Cardiff airport to Cardiff Central. The public transport connections are quite good. Yet if someone, maybe because is it very late or you are several people and besides you do not really know where exactly to find the hotel you have made a reservation at, wants to take a taxi, he will find enough of them waiting at the airport.
However, you cannot take any one of them at random. No! First, you have to enter a small office with a waiting area for the drivers. There, you will get a small slip of paper with a fixed price written on it (for instance 27 £ to the Hotel Sandringham, right next to the station) and then you are allocated to a waiting taxi driver. It is a typically Anglo-Saxon process.
To balance the inconvenience, the return flight was rather early. And we also had to pick up someone on our way to the airport. So we took another taxi which came at 6.30 a.m. and took us to the airport. The driver was quite talkative. I asked him if he was now permitted to take in passengers at the airport for the way back. He said no. He has to go back empty and he really thinks this is nonsense.
That is exactly how I feel about it. It is an excellent example how selfishness is put before the common good and how stupid such behaviour is. Because the taxi drivers at the airport defend their territory against all other taxi drivers. And vice versa. In the end, however, they are all worse off: higher costs and more time, along with less turnover. Not to mention the detrimental effect on the environment and the disregard for resources. It is not only a taxi dilemma. The same dilemma is prevalent with trucks going back home empty.
Matters in Wales are no different from matters in Germany. Nobody seems to enjoy sharing, even if they would eventually all get a bigger slice of the cake.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
Due to the small detour, the way back cost 30 £ . On the whole, we spent 57 £. The flight Munich-Cardiff for three passengers was 350 €. So the taxi cost almost one fifth of the flight. Very interesting.
The trip by train would have been 150 Euros one way for adults. We would have had to start in Munich at 5 o’clock and would have arrived in Cardiff around midnight. Special bargains as advertised in subway trains and on posters were not available online for a considerable period of time. Neither was there a reasonable night train connection (except if you wanted to change at Cologne before five in the morning and wait for more than one and a half hour on the cold platform of Cologne).
So what was I supposed to do?
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