Taxi!

The London taxi--durable, unchanging and old-fashioned as a Prince Albert coat --is a rolling exemplar of a British view of life. It is designed to 1) negotiate streets whose narrowness memorializes the Briton's refusal to change anything old, 2) protect a person's sacred right of privacy, 3) commemorate the principle that every man--in this case, the cabbie--must keep his proper place.

Model 1920 or just off the assembly line, it is a spindly Victorian-looking machine with a rubber bulb horn and a wheezy engine. Its thin-spoked front wheels, poking forward like the forelegs of a praying mantis, can--by police stipulation--negotiate a U-turn in a 25-ft. lane. Up front sits the cabbie, exposed on each side to spring's deluge and winter's blasts, separated from his passenger by half an inch of plate glass and half a century of tradition. "Won't do to get too close to the passenger," explained one cabbie cheerfully. "Might cause a revolution or something." Behind rides the passenger, in a compartment as high as a silk topper (which, by regulation, it must be high enough to accommodate).

Londoners learned with a start last week that its beloved taxicab may be riding its last crooked mile. London now has only 5,400 taxis, and nearly 40% of them are at least ten years old, a parliamentary committee found. Furthermore, cab owners are losing about .78 pence a mile, and higher rates would not help, since the last increase brought a commensurate drop in fares. The only company now making cabs (Austin) is down to five orders a week and ready to halt production unless orders increase.

"Under present economic and fiscal conditions," reported the committee, "the decline ... is likely to continue until there ceases to be an effective taxicab service in London."

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