Unit 3b + 3c

Complete the second sentence. Use as ... as or not as ... as and the adjective in brackets.

Read part of a news article about taxis in London. What does it compare?

BATTLE OF THE TAXIS

When you travel in London, the city’s famous black taxis or black ‘cabs’ are a convenient type of transport. On any main road there are frequent cabs, and even with four or five people they’re comfortable to ride in. But now the traditional black cab has competition from private hire taxis such as Uber, Karhoo or Addison Lee. Using your mobile phone, you can book a private hire taxi for a certain time and they are very punctual. Sometimes these private taxis are also a bit cheaper and a little faster. However, in bad traffic, black-cab drivers say their cabs are much faster. They have to learn all the roads around London, so they don’t use sat nav, and they know the best routes around the city. They think that private taxis are a lot less reliable in rush-hour traffic.

Read the article. Which paragraph talks about:

The end of the road

Kolkata is the capital of West Bengal in India. It has a population of around 15 million people and the rush hour starts early in the morning. All day there are traffic jams with cars, public buses, taxis, motorbikes and pedicabs, and drivers honk their horns from morning to night. You can also catch the train or get on the underground, but those are busy too. For pedestrians, Kolkata can be dangerous – crossing the road is especially difficult. Fortunately, the old parts of the city have smaller streets which are better if you go on foot. Cars can’t drive down them so they are much quieter and a lot safer.

In these old streets, you’ll see men pulling rickshaws. They are a traditional type of transport in the city and local people still like using them. Early in the day, the drivers pick up children and take them to school. And if you miss your bus to work, a hand-pulled rickshaw is much cheaper than taking a taxi. Then, later on in the day, housewives often prefer to go by rickshaw to the local markets. The driver drops them off with their shopping outside their house; no other type of public transport can do that! So rickshaws are popular with many local people. When the traffic is very bad, you can go anywhere by rickshaw. Kolkata is one of the last cities in the world with hand-pulled rickshaws, so the drivers also make money from tourists. Visitors to the city often want to get a photograph sitting on a rickshaw because it’s a famous symbol of Kolkata.

However, not everyone thinks the famous rickshaws are a good idea. Some local politicians don’t like this old type of transport because they think it’s wrong for one human to pull another human. Instead, they want more rickshaw drivers to use pedicabs or modern electric rickshaws, which are clean and fast. The problem is that Kolkata has around 2,000 rickshaw drivers who pull their passengers by hand. They are often men from villages in the countryside and they don’t have any other job. The new electric rickshaws are very expensive, so these drivers can’t afford them. For these men, it’s probably the end of the road for the traditional rickshaw and their way of life.

Vocabulary:

• electric rickshaw: a modern type of rickshaw with an electric engine.
• honk your horn: make a loud noise in a car to tell people you are there.
• pedicab: a type of taxi with no engine. The driver cycles.

Replace the verbs in bold with the verbs or verb phrases in the exercise above: