Arrive in any new city and the first impression you glean of it will be the cabbie who takes you downtown. And this impression might not be too positive if the taxi driver deems that you are not traveling as far as he would like.

And if I hadn't already lived in Shanghai for 10 years, my good opinion of the place might have been seriously dented after a run-in with a certain taxi driver last month.

After waving off my relatives at Hongqiao Airport, I joined the long queue at the taxi rank to get a cab home.

However, when I told the driver that I only wanted to travel to a destination within Putuo district, he gave me a look of disgust. He didn't say anything initially, but quickly took a "detour" in the direction of the Outer Ring Road. When I told him to head back in the direction of the Middle Ring Road, he couldn't contain himself.

"Are you kidding me? If you wanted to save money, why didn't you just take the metro!" he shouted, while hitting the accelerator and speeding up the taxi to nearly 180 kilometers per hour.

I patiently asked him to slow down and informed him that he was risking both of our lives. "If all of my passengers were like you, I wouldn't be able to feed my family," he snapped. "So if that was the case, I would rather die alongside you!"

The rest of the journey was conducted in silence, and when we arrived at my home I only had a 100 yuan ($15.74) note to pay the 35 yuan fare with. The driver snatched the money off me and ran into a convenience store. He came out with a packet of cigarettes and threw me a 50 yuan note, shortchanging me by 15 yuan.

I am sure I am not the only victim of an irate taxi driver at the Hongqiao Transportation Hub, where a railway station, an international airport and two metro lines meet.

In fact, passengers traveling to anywhere within Jiading, Putuo, Changning, Xuhui, Minhang and even Songjiang districts are regularly subjected to such abuse according to a recent report in the Shanghai Youth Daily.

The story aroused controversy among readers, many of whom related similar experiences. Taxi drivers defended themselves by complaining such people aren't "going far enough," meaning that the fare doesn't compensate for the amount of time they have waited at the taxi rank.

Of course we all know what is really happening here. Taxi drivers hope that passengers they pick up will be traveling to some far-flung destination such as Pudong New Area or Chongming county. And if not? Well, they rely on people arriving at transport terminals to be out-of-towners who they can take on a "roundabout" route to their proffered destination. Either way, taxi drivers in Hongqiao believe that a long wait for a passenger can be financially beneficial to them. 

The problem is that such behavior not only damages the reputation of taxi firms, but of the whole city.

My suggestion would be to create two separate taxi queues at the transportation hub: one for passengers traveling within a 5-mile radius, and the other for people traveling further than that. In this way, cabbies will know exactly who they are picking up and will hopefully refrain from creating such a bad impression of our fair city.