Now, local cabbies say the cops are driving them crazy. The cab never came, so he ended up taking me home. When I was in D.C. last summer there was a cab every step you took, but in San Jose, you have to wait forever. May's experience is not a unique one. For many people, a weekend evening in the downtown area frequently ends after a jaunt along a neighborhood sidewalk.
People usually get frustrated and leave.
Those who are patient enough to remain, he says, are sometimes still standing on the sidewalk after he has turned out the lights and locked up for the night. And high-demand daytime hours are often no better. While San Jose continues to play host to Internet and business conferences, the executives and industry specialists who attend those conferences complain that sometimes they can't even get a cab out of the airport. And at one time, the goal of having a thriving cab industry seems to have been in place. With such lofty objectives built right into the city ordinances, opportunity-savvy taxicab entrepreneurs should be swarming to San Jose faster than software engineers.