The Knowledge of London for cab drivers
tfl.gov.uk
tfl.gov.uk
However, everything else I dislike with black cabs. I mostly use Uber and when the main route is problematic, the driver focuses on his phone more than on the road, and that's alright. At least they are polite and don't try to rip me off like too many black cabs tried to.
I am pretty sure every other Uber and black cab driver is much more experienced.
If anything, the traditional trope was that they were "generous" - if you asked for a receipt, they would give you a wedge of empty receipts for you to fill in yourself for tax claims.
[1] https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/taxis-and-minicabs/taxi-fares?intcm...
Fixed fares were mostly arranged and inflated by dealings with hotel concierges with cash exchanging hands before the guest went in their black cab.
So, to answer your question clearly, they attempted to rip me and my visiting relatives off multiple times by hearing a strong accent, and starting taking obviously non optimum routes until they are told to take the exact road I know that is in fact much shorter, and much faster. Several times.
Paying a third party cash before a journey is arranged is not the typical use case for a black cab. In a traditional hotel situation, the concierge would either wander out into the street to hail a taxi for you that you pay for yourself (black cab), or act as a booking agent for a taxi (mini cab). It sounds like your family was being ripped off in the second scenario, and possibly tricked into thinking they were taking a black cab.
https://www.nature.com/news/the-knowledge-enlarges-your-brai...
There is zero reason to continue to have such a complicated test for taxi drivers when satnavs are so effective, all it does is raise costs for riders and make it harder for people to become drivers.
Google Maps just isn't that smart yet. Yes, you can absolutely drive a car through London on a route yourself and it'll work fine, for some definition of "fine". On the other hand a taxi driver is supposed to be able to perform to a far better definition of fine[1].
Google Maps accounts for traffic when it's bad. Does it account for traffic patterns before it gets bad? Maybe, badly. Does it account for bad traffic that it knows is going to happen because it chatted about an event in a certain place with another cabbie over tea earlier, or because it knows that there's a road closure for a race this afternoon? No. Google Maps is so far from taking into account things like this, but they are natural for a human, particularly one with expertise.
Google Maps will take you to a place, but what if the place you need is more nuanced than that? The stations in London often have multiple entrances, and walking from the wrong entrance to your platform could be 5 minutes and you'll miss your train because of it. Cabbies can take you to the correct entrance because they know this. Does Google Maps account for this? Maybe, badly. What if you need to get to the stage door of a theatre? This could be a few minutes away from the public entrance, but cabbies are supposed to know these sorts of landmarks. Does Google Maps account for this? No. What if you want to go to The Dorchester, let's hope you get directions to the hotel and not the town.
It's easy to excuse getting the wrong entrance to a location, or being off by 15 minutes on a journey, when it's just you driving yourself through London, but this doesn't work at the scale of public transport, and doesn't work if you are buying a service from a provider who is supposed to have intimate knowledge of the city.
Tech can probably manage these things at some point, but like with so much "disruption", we've solved a basic version of the problem and declared it better and stopped listening to people who have collectively been doing it for a century.
[1]: Some taxi drivers in London are crap because they can't be bothered. I'm talking about the hypothetical good, qualified, cabbie.
Does Google definitely not account for future events? If I plan a journey for London Marathon day, say, does it not even warn me of delays?
Does it take in warnings of engineering works (eg for rail travel)?
I don't think Google maintain their own data for rail travel, and the data sources aren't that good, so I doubt they'll be accounting for engineering works unless either they are scheduled far in advance or they've been happening for a while.
In my experience it takes time equivalent to a bunch of people having a crap journey and Google collecting that data for Google's instructions to change, they're not pre-emptive based on expert knowledge, they're reactive based on collected data.
I'd argue it's been happening on a fairly large scale for the last few years. That Uber is competitive is a good sign that the Knowledge isn't nearly as much of an advantage as the cabbies would have you believe, but nor has it been completely eclipsed by tech
I was a Carpenter and Joiner. Crappy gangs with nail guns and battery saws could compete with me on some of my work, leaving too little of the skilled stuff to make a living. CNC stair builders churned out a demonstrably worse but cheaper version of what my workshop made. My Dad, long past retirement age, is still living on the crumbs these kids leave behind. When he dies there will be none left in our old patch that can do some of the old skills, like traditional roofing (where prefab trussed rafters can't be used).
I am not 100% clear that this is a better world.
I use the tube in London, but black cabs are still the premium service.
That sounds like is is better by the standards the customer cares about. The trick, I think, is realizing when your goals and those of your customer diverge.
How many people understand whats important in a roof joist when they are having their new home built?
You're right. It's obvious that price isn't the only signal. But perhaps it's more readily comprehensible in many cases, especially when other signals are potentially less trustworthy.
My butt has been a butt for a few decades now, and I don't have to listen to a thing it says. Perhaps mere duration does not automatically imbue a practice, habit, arrangement, or person with value and wisdom worthy of preservation.
If we came upon the idea today, and someone told me they had memorized a ton of streets, could sometimes do marginally better than GMaps, and therefore deserved to be paid a major premium over what GMaps could do, we would be skeptical of the cost/value tradeoff. Except, perhaps, as a luxury service for the upper crust.
I also had a LOT of experiences with Lyft drivers that were clearly very new to the city and lacked basic awareness of unusually set up but major intersections, and near-rush-hour traffic patterns. This lead to things like going the wrong way on one-way streets and missing turn lanes.
Software still has a long ways to go before it can adequately capture and work with that type of region-specific organization.
> Uber/Lyft I usually had to give the full address and then wait while they typed it in
With Uber and Lyft, YOU have to type in the address in the app before the car even gets summoned. You also get to see the destination so that there is no mistake. So I don't know why on Earth you would think you have to wait for them to type it in. You can't just hail an Uber and tell them where you want to go once you get in. That's simply not how it works.
One journey I know and have had to do regularly to look after a relative since lockdown, Google maps takes a significant journey of around 30 minutes when I or a cab driver can do it in less than 15.
One wrong turn and a lack of initiative from a driver can lead you to a very long journey given the destruction of the central London road system
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/magazine-3...