Missy had a couple friends in town for the week, and it just so happened they were looking for a quality place to have a nice dinner. Given that the Great Plate Debate has been going on for a couple months, of course there was a recommendation – Mon Oncle le Vigneron. When searching for the restaurant to get the address, guess what result came up number one?
Yes, it is ridiculous, but I got a kick out of it. Flash forward several hours and we get to something I do *not* get a kick out of – taxis in Paris. Something is wrong when I had an easier time getting a taxi in Kansas City, city population of about 450,000, than I do in Paris, city population of 9.65 million. We had made the mistake of leaving Buddha Bar after the metro had closed, so maybe around 12:45 AM. I expected few problems since it was early on a Thursday, but guess what? We ended walking almost the entire distance home before we leaped out in front of a cab, finally convincing one to stop.
The frustrating thing about it all is that there are taxi stands throughout the city, but there is never a line of taxis waiting there. Rather, those taxi stands probably see an average of one taxi every fifteen minutes. The taxi situation is quite obscene, and it’s not a lie when people tell you there are basically two options – get home before the metro closes, or stay out until 6 AM when it opens back up.
I decided to break out my Frenglish on the taxi driver on the way back to my apartment, and I was able to determine that (according to him) there are 5,000 taxi licenses in the city. 5,000! That is one for every 1,930 people in a city where most people use public transportation. Sick. And this is what is bothersome about France – the reason there are so few taxis is because the taxi union refuses to allow additional cars on the road. If the government changed it, I’ll give you one guess what the French taxi union would do in response…
On the plus side, my cabbie did say the government is going to increase the number of taxis in Paris, although it is a process that is going to take a couple years. I abused the power of the Internet to find some facts, and I did find an article that is both interesting and probably more realistic, in terms of numbers, than my driver’s ramblings…
“There’ll be trouble,” spat the man behind the wheel as we hurtled through the pre-lunch traffic earlier this week, pedestrians hopping hastily aside and other motorists left gesturing Gallically in our wake.
“Whore of my testicles, there’ll be trouble. Eighteen years I’ve been in this job and I’ve never seen the boys so angry.”
As opening conversational gambits go this was unusually cheery, coming from a Paris taxi driver. But something was clearly up. What it was, the driver told me when he wasn’t accusing the man in front of having been born in a brothel, was that the town hall had decided, on the advice of the chief of police, to increase the number of licensed taxi cabs plying the streets of the French capital.
“Another 1,500 licences over the next five years,” he said. “When half of us are already on the equivalent of the minimum wage. It’s theft, pure and simple. We won’t sit by and let it happen.”
Under the circumstances (an urgent summons to the foreign ministry), it didn’t seem politic to disagree. But inwardly I blessed the good councillors: grabbing a cab in Paris is an exercise that requires, on a good day, time, patience and luck. On a bad day, forget it.
Intrigued by the driver’s news, I asked at the town hall.
Back in the Belle Epoque days of 1920, it seems, Paris had 25,000 taxis. But that clearly was altogether too pleasant for the people who used them, so a bylaw was passed in 1937 cutting their number to a more reasonable 14,000. Since then it has been increased just twice, in 1967 and 1991, to a grand total of 14,900.
This means, if my maths are not mistaken, that while the population of greater Paris has grown from 4m to nearly 10m, and incomes have risen such that many more people are inclined to take a taxi, a major European capital now has less than 60% of the taxis that it had 78 years ago. (London has more than four times as many taxis as Paris.)
The consequences of this are not immediately appreciable to the casual observer. Between, say, 9am and midday and 3pm and 7pm, finding a taxi in Paris is no problem: there are hundreds of them cruising the streets or waiting patiently at one of their 487 ranks, smoking a Gauloise (the driver, that is).
But when most normal people might actually want a cab, which is to say to go to lunch or dinner, out for the evening, or home after midnight, they vanish. This is because the Paris taxi driver’s dejeuner is as sacrosanct as his diner, and at night, naturellement, he sleeps.
Paris cabbies, enthusiastic mounters of strikes, go-slows and blockades whenever anyone threatens the status quo, say the council’s daring decision will slash their incomes by 20%, and ruin the market in taxi licences to boot.
These currently change hands for just under £75,000, and represent a handy retirement bonus for most drivers.
But what will really inflame passions is not so much the new licence-holders as the one condition that the town hall plans to place on them: the obligation to work from noon to 3pm, 7pm to 9pm, and after midnight.
“There’ll be trouble,” spat the cabbie who arrived to take the babysitter home the other night (after a 20-minute wait on the phone to book him).
By Guardian Unlimited © Copyright Guardian Newspapers 2008
Published: 2/28/2003
