Uh-uh. Because you can just use a payphone to call one, right?

When I lost my phone in Madrid, and realized that I have no way to call a taxi, since I was staying in a residential area where you don't see taxis in the streets.

My Spanish was barely sufficient to explain my predicament, and I lucked out because a random convenience store clerk called me a taxi from his phone.

Which reminds me: in case you didn't notice, there are no more payphones. In 2001, I could walk up to one, and use one of them Yellow Books to do anything you could do one the phone.

Today, you need to have a smartphone to do many basic things.

Really? I live in Barcelona and there are always taxis ready for the hailing :) Uber and Lyft are not common here, though a local alternative, Cabify is. But whenever I use cabify I need to wait for ages for them to get there, and tens of taxis pass me during this time. So I only use them when I want the quiet of a nice car or when I want to know how much I'll pay in advance.

There are still some payphones here too, but most of them have been vandalised, that's true.

The comment thread mentions flying into a city by air. There are taxis at airports without fail anywhere I've been

That very much depends on location and time. Smaller airports particularly, in off hours, may only have ten to twelve, which is not enough for that late plane that's coming in.

Fair point although worst case is you wait longer

Try flying into not-even-that-rural Iowa.

I would bring a phone in that case. I would bring a phone in any case.

True, but I was going to have trouble hailing a taxi from inside a port after dropping off my car for shipping across the ocean.

Which in typical fashion, I dropped off just under the deadline, so the office was closed.

Oh did I mention that no there aren't regular taxis on this island anymore? I should have mentioned that first.