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Dangerous and Costly — Hailing a Gypsy Cab in Moscow

Created: 24.06.2006 10:30 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 10:30 MSK

Lisa Vronskaya

MosNews

Some of the Russian travel guides available on the internet claim that Moscow gypsy cabs are the cheapest and most reliable means of transportation in the Russian capital. This is not always the case, however.

Taking a taxi is expensive and dangerous. That notion, dating back to Soviet times, is still widespread in this country, particularly among senior citizens who still avoid dining out, as restaurants are forever associated in their minds with Soviet-type obshchepit public catering outlets, with cockroaches crawling on the floor and flies hovering over self-service counters.

The past decades have seen drastic changes. Just as the public catering sector is booming, there are dozens of companies in Moscow offering reliable — if not cheap — taxi services provided by experienced drivers who know the city well, can masterfully avoid traffic jams and carry patrons to a desired destination in clean cars where smoking is prohibited.

To hire a cab you can just call the service and a polite operator will take the order. Most people I know use that service when they need to get to the airport. It is quite costly — getting to Sheremetievo II International Airport, northwards from Moscow, from Leninsky Prospekt (Moscow south) costs about 800 rubles, or approximately $30, (though, much cheaper, of course, than taxi fares in London or Vienna).

Hiring a gypsy cab is much cheaper, indeed. All you need to do is to stand on the side of the road and raise your hand. Nine times out of 10, a string of cars will line up immediately to offer their services. Many motorists here will be happy to earn an extra hundred or two.

Some of them hunt passengers from dawn till dusk, others are office drivers who pick up passengers between their official assignments--(once I traveled home from work in a car with a flashing light on the roof, driven by a driver of a judge of the Constitutional Court. I was lucky to survive the ride — to get past a traffic jam, the driver ignored all the public safety rules and drove against head-on traffic), still others are unemployed, or immigrants.

The problem with most gypsy drivers is that their cars stink, they play disgusting pop music on their badly-tuned radios and have only a vague notion of urban geography.

Some never cease talking--they don’t even care whether you listen or not, others chain smoke, still others stop the engine every time the car stops at traffic lights--obviously thinking this will save them fuel.

Nobody wears seat belts--not ever. I remember one driver asking me, as I struggled to pull the belt that obviously had never been used ever since the vehicle left the assembly line: “Don’t you trust my driving skills, lady?” (But that’s a national problem. Russians, for some reason, never care to wear seat belts. Russian traffic police almost never fine anyone for the violation.)

As to the size of the fare, it may vary from 50 rubles (less than $2) to as much as 300 or 400 rubles, depending on where you need to go and how greedy the driver is.

But as there are no fixed standards, it is very likely that if one driver wants 150 rubles from you for a 20-minute ride, you will soon find another who will take you there for 100.

One more point: if you are young and good looking, all you have to do is just use your smile. Some guys sometimes refuse to charge young girls, provided, of course, it is only a short ride and he is going in the same direction in the first place — with or without them.

Female gypsy drivers are rare. I met one only once. She told me she had been in the trade for many years and was making more money than she would have ever had, if she had pursued her teaching career. She was, I think, the only taxi driver I’ve ever seen who was wearing a seat belt.

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