Getting Home From Downtown
It’s 2AM, Saturday night. You had a great time at the bars. You’ve already chowed down your Mega Pizza. You’re trying to get home, but you missed the last Late Night Bus….so what do you do?
Unless you have a sober friend to drive you home, you will be partaking in one of Guelph’s most difficult after-bar rituals: getting a cab.
Guelph has recently passed a bylaw that tells cabs to make use of the rooflight — light on means it’s available — veteran students may have not known this privilege, so keep an eye out for it this time! No longer will we have to stare at what seems to be a vacant cab, like starving dogs to a lone piece of steak.
Here are some tips that should make your quest for getting home easier.
Start walking towards your home
Your first move should be to get out of the downtown core. Cabs will rarely, rarely get there. All the smart people are already lining up at the streets in front of downtown (Subway, Angel’s Diner and car dealership area) and jumping on the empty cabs returning from a trip.
Go to the cab stands
There are four designated spots in downtown that cabs will be frequenting throughout the night. Check out the Late Night Bus stop, the Canadian Cab HQ, the area in front of Doogie’s and down past Trappers on MacDonnell. Cabs will swing by these hotspots whenever they are free.
Join forces
An easily overlooked tactic than can triple or quadruple your chances of getting a cab is to find people going in the same direction as you, and then splitting a cab. Logical capacity is scarce when it’s getting late and lots of people miss this one very easy method of getting a cab.
And if all else fails…I hope you’re not wearing heels. At least your walk should burn off some of that Mega Pizza.
