For those who have trouble visualizing the braking and taxi maneuvers, the interplanetary ships enter an elliptical orbit around the destination planet and fire their ion drives in the direction of travel to keep decelerating slowly.  The ships will make one ellipse around the planet.  Taxis will speed up from station in low circular orbit to go on ellipse that touches interplanetary ship orbit at perigee of its comet like orbit and speed up to match velocity.  Travelers will take their light luggage and board taxi quickly.  Taxi will then slow down and fall back to low orbit, fire engines to slow down and circularize orbit and dock with space station.  From space station they will transfer to landers or shuttles. Ships will keep thrusting in a tightening ellipse until they to circularize in low orbit and dock at space station for servicing and refueling.  Autopilot will control braking so that crew doesn't have to endure the monotony of this maneuver in space.

This will all work out for clippers with perhaps 100 people aboard, but it will be nearly impossible for 2500 people on giant liners of the far future to rapidly transfer to taxis at perigee.  Huge liners will carry fueled taxis, just a fraction of the ship's great mass, with them.  Travelers will have plenty of time before perigee passage to board taxis and rocket over to space stations in low orbit.  Taxis of giant liners might use LANTR for better performance.  Travelers will board giant liners at space stations at Earth-Moon L2, sail to Venus or Mars, and take taxis to low orbiting space stations above Venus or Mars while the mother ship slowly spirals in.  Taxis will be refueled at low orbit space stations and park inside garage.  When leaving planet, travelers will shuttle up to station where liners are docked after their long braking maneuvers and board them again.  It will be possible for liners to spiral away from Venus or Mars with sail power because neither planet has VABs, unlike Earth, which adds complication to interplanetary flight to or from Earth.  The basic design of large liners will follow that of cycling station below.  They will use mag-solar sails and some kind of accessory drive like gas core fission+LH2 when LH2 pipelines from Mars and the ice moons of Jupiter is established.  The accessory drive will speed up their escape from planet, but dragging fuel for braking will add too much parasitic mass, so they will rely on sails and taxi system at destination planet.

Taxis will park inside garage fully fueled in anticipation of planet fall.  LANTR will yeild far better performance than Al+LOX monopropellant and this may be necessary for high speed maneuvers when encountering destination planet.  Ship will have heavy boil off reliquefaction systems to keep cryogen fuel cold during voyage.  After passing the planet and entering ellipse the travelers will have plenty of time to board taxis and prepare for perigee passage and undocking from mother ship followed by rocketing down to low planetary orbit where space stations and landers/shuttles are.

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