When the best system is no system

What a pleasure when everything works. Having woken up to sunrise over Monaco and shirt sleeve weather at dawn, it really feels like spring has arrived – even in London. When transport works its such a pleasure to travel. Taxi on time, no traffic, no queues at the airport, allowed to take my case on the plane (well done BA) and out of Heathrow before you can say boo. Maybe I could make that 10.30 meeting after all.

But what’s this? – a 100m queue for taxis at Paddington. Whoops. But then like magic, I was whisked to the front to “taxi share”. Alas you have to wait til they can fill the taxi with people going where you’re going, or not as the case maybe. The taxi stand being occupied with one cab, whilst all this goes on. Poor people in the queue just never seemed to move forward, despite 3 of 6 taxi stops being for them and 3 for taxi share. Luckily I was first stop of 5 in my taxi. God help the poor guys in my cab going to the City after I was dropped in Victoria. With traffic moving at the speed of a speeding bullet, not, that was a major time delay for some very expensive money men. But quicker than waiting 100m. And cheaper with a fixed fare of £6 in my case, and £30 per taxi driver for one journey across London so he wins too.

An improvement or not from before? If you measure in financial terms, yes. In terms of the number of taxis driving out of Paddington – well yes and no. There are fewer taxis only because very few leave the place whilst they get filled with 5 passengers. Are there fewer cabs on the road? No, they all have to go somewhere, but maybe over time. Not in time terms. Nor in branding, setting up London as a chaotic place to enter. Mumbai just has rows of taxis and you get in one and off you go. Come to think of it so does Paddington, tucked round the corner trying to get into the station.

It’s a great example of the “Viz” consultants (Viz is an anarchic mag for those of you who havent seen it) going in and trying to improve, only to complicate and make worse (don’t get me started on the Viz consultants working on the medical profession and how it recruits !)

Was there something else they could have done? Yes nothing. In fact less than nothing. They could have removed the whole process.

There are no shortage of taxis sitting outside Paddington trying to get in. There are a finite two lanes to drive into the station. But there is at least 200m (x2) of kerb on the edge of those lanes once into the station. So what if there was “no” system. No queuing, no set 6 pick up points bottle necking the two lanes, no one directing traffic etc etc. Taxis allowed to pick up at any point along the kerb. People allowed to flag a cab at any point along the 200m. Would there be a queue? Let’s assume we treat it like a formula 1 pit lane and only allow stopping in one lane, the other being used to drive in and out. With 200m of kerb to use, I doubt it.

As we say, the best service is no (need for) service. Maybe this is a case of 'The best system is no (Viz designed) system'.