In message , at 22:54:23 on Wed, 6 Nov 2019,
John Levine remarked:
In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:
I don't think you are a very typical traveller. Most are very
unadventurous when it comes to foreign countries, and hence the race for
taxis (and HEx's mission to replace taxis).

Depends who the travellers are. I'm currently at an ICANN meeting (I know
you know who they are)

I'm vaguely following the proceedings from Montreal on social media.

whose travel department's phobia of public transport

I've been to about a dozen, even by train for Paris, Brussels and London
(although the latter is hardly surprising as there are no flights from
Cambridge to London). But never had any involvement from their travel
department.

Because it was my third or fourth trip to the City, I used public
transport to get to get from the airport to their meeting in Prague. I
know the RIR policy would be "you must be mad - we'll order you a limo".

that is not an airplane is just comic. But I don't think it's universal.

The RIRs are almost as bad!

As a result, and even as a more adventurous traveller (colleagues were
amazed I dared get a bus from Geneva to the airport, and didn't even
consider rail) I think I've only once got a train on first arrival at a
suitably equipped overseas airport.

Huh, I do it all the time.

Every *first* time you visit these places?

I can think of Frankfurt, Paris CDG, Munich, Barcelona, Narita, Haneda,
Seoul (now permanently bustituted), Hong Kong, and Singapore. And
Gatwick and Prestwick, since I live in the US.

You are much more travelled than average. And quite likely visit them
more than once, so you have a chance to come to grips with the local
peculiarities. For example, I've been to Seoul twice now, and the second
time I took an express coach back to the airport. The railway line
stopped short.

I was a bit put off by the difficulty of collecting a pre-bought TGV
ticket in Paris, though.

Gee, it's easy to put your SNCF ticket on your smartphone. (Yes, I
know.)

My experience with using foreign transport apps (and I *have* tried) is
that between them either not apparently working at all, and the steep
learning curve, if you are visiting for the first time it's easier to
just buy a paper ticket when you get there.

The HEx app scores an impressive 1.8 stars (almost all the scores are 1
- "terrible").

It also seems to me that when Crossrail is running through trains, the
HeX time advantage will be a lost for many places Crossrail goes
beyond Paddington. It's not just the fares.

How many of the Crossrail stations will have taxi ranks?

I dunno. I was thinking that a lot of them will be within walking
distance of where one wants to go.

The kind of airline passenger who would normally have got a taxi
door-to-door previously, but decides to give HEx a try instead, isn't
likely to be wanting to be wandering round London on foot in all
weathers with with their baggage trying to find heir hotel.

And how widespread is contactless outside the UK? The USA is catching up
rapidly, but is probably still in single figure percentages.

In the US and Canada I see lots of contactless cards, now that it's a
standard feature of new point-of-sale terminals.

There's a lot more issued so far in Canada than USA, apparently.
--
Roland Perry