For London's Cabbies, Job Entails World's Hardest Geography Test | Hacker News Reader

For London's Cabbies, Job Entails World's Hardest Geography Test

news.nationalgeographic.com

48 pointsCaptainZapp68 comments

A few things you may not know if you've never lived in London:

1) London taxis are permitted to use most bus lanes, with or without passengers. Regular cars or minivans are not, even if they are carrying 5 or 7 passengers. This doesn't encourage efficient use of road space.

2) London taxis are meant to take you wherever you want to go but when I lived there they would often flout this rule. A friend of mine would deliberately wait on the Northbound side of the street, so that passing taxi drivers wouldn't pass him by because they didn't want to go to South London. Only after he was seated would he tell them his destination, which is when the 25-foot turning circle came in handy.

3) London taxis are exempt from the congestion charge (a large toll zone within London, with a fixed daily fee of over 18USD). Regular cars must pay, even though they would typically spend a much smaller proportion of their time on the road, thereby causing less congestion than taxis which are driving around all day.

Couple more to add, from a London regular:

4) London taxis are incredibly expensive in inefficient. I did a thorough comparison of them against train and car travel into the city considering the other 4 people in the car with me (I travel efficiently). I now drive into the city and pay for parking in NCP/hospital car parks. I don't get charged for congestion charge because I drive an exempt vehicle. This happens once a week for me and it's cheap and very easy. The CC zone is pretty easy to get around and the supposed bus lane advantage is null as they have loading bays all up and down them and people don't give way to taxis and busses pulling into normal traffic.

5) London taxis don't always take the most efficient route. They take the msot profitable. This isn't universally true but I've been in many a taxi taking complicated back street routes when the main route would suffice. They are charged both on time and distance but distance is considerably more profitable.

So if there's more than 2 people in the car, the car is CC exempt, even if you pay for parking, getting around London is bliss and cheap.

Plus you can stick the radio on whatever you want rather than Capital FM which is all cabbies seem to listen to.

Why is your car exempt?

Small engine, low emissions.

Your point (3) is a little off; the congestion charge might be preventing a really large number of private cars from driving within the toll zone. If there are enough private cars, they can cause more congestion overall even though they individually make small contributions.

My point is that the congestion caused by a single taxi in a day is multiples of that caused by an average car in a day. So, it's not economically efficient (i.e. doesn't provide the right incentives) if the taxi pays zero (for driving around all day), and the regular car pays 11 pounds (for what is usually a one-time crossing through the zone).

I don't disagree with the principle of the congestion charge. I just think that the pricing should be such that it incentivises a reduction in congestion. Mileage-based charging would help with that.

The CC is not a big deal. If you travel in lots, you get a discount. If you don't, it's £11.

Or in my case it's £0 because my car is exempt.

There wasn't any congestion before it and to be honest it's worse now than ever. Been driving in and out for 22 years.

2b) You should try getting a black cab from Heathrow Airport to a location near Heathrow .. if you want to receive a prolonged insult-filled monologue.

The one time I was in London, I did this, and the fellow dumped me out after I told him the nearby destination.

I did this a few tomes with no problems. Having said that Heathrow also has a fucking million buses and coaches, and a tube line, taking people from Heathrow airport to the local regions so I tended to use those instead.

Some people don't feel safe on public transport late at night.

And there's no need to swear.

> 2) London taxis are meant to take you wherever you want to go but when I lived there they would often flout this rule.

Regulation works if people report the offenders.

Well they don't flat our refuse. But like OP said, they just don't drive down the southbound route to avoid going to the southern parts of town. So what are you going to report? That you have seen 50 taxis going north, but 0 going south?

Yes, that sounds good. Contact complaints[0] and indicate that black cabs seemingly and magically never seem to go south, and you have to trick them by standing on the other side of the road to catch them.

[0] http://www.londonblacktaxis.net/complaints.htm

That wouldn't work. That page says 'Only complaints where a driver has contravened Hackney Carriage law can be investigated.'

I don't think keeping your light off whenever driving South contravenes those laws.

How many separate reports of failing to accept a fare would cause a driver to lose their taxi licence?

Without knowing the answer to this question, it's hard to know whether your statement is true in this case.

> The five years he has spent on the quest is fairly typical.

> The Uber driver did the run from the newspaper's office in King's Cross to Big Ben, in Westminster, in 22 minutes; the cabbie did it in 18, by taking a slightly longer route he knew to be quicker.

The apparent extent of London cabbies is undoubtedly impressive, but I'm not sure the benefits outweigh the benefits of the Uber driver not having to spend five years studying the roads.

The Knowledge's purpose is not just to know the fastest travel between A and B in ideal conditions (although a 20% improvement in that situation would be nothing to sneeze at), it's to know it in any condition and to be able to find B however it's specified and to be able to explain landmarks to tourists. In fact the original article on the comparison notes at least part of that:

> The Uber leg does not start well. After the app is downloaded, it stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that the Guardian exists. Only with the help of an old-fashioned desktop computer is registration completed and a car booked for a four-mile journey from the Guardian's offices in King's Cross to Big Ben in Westminster.

and the difference in fare between Uber and the black cab was 8%.

> and the difference in fare between Uber and the black cab was 8%

When not on surge pricing, UberX is generally 50-60% discount on the price of a black cab in my experience. Being able to get home for £7 after a night out is amazing.

Thanks for this. Have to decide between black cab and uber later this week and didn't know which would be cheaper. Do you know how accurate Uber's fare estimates are (do they update during surge pricing)?

You study the roads by driving them everyday. It makes you familiar with traffic patterns, POI, and small details that a GPS simply won't give you, (ie. when primary schools let out avoid this route).

I've met some Uber drivers who are using the service as mileage builders until they are ready to take the tests.

Google or Apple maps could easily suggest you "avoid this route when primary schools out" because they have average traffic speed data and can see that around those areas at those times traffic moves slowly. They don't have to know the underlying cause to be effective.

They could,but they don't. Also it would be good if they could predict traffic, like if there is a game in town or a planned protest, then don't take certain routes, even though they might be completely empty right now. A good cabbie will know that, sat nav - not a chance.

Google also doesn't know when there's roadwork, and will happily suggest that you take a street that's going to add 15-25 minutes to your journey, but only this weekend.

I once had it give me three routes: head down 210th until you're halfway to your destination, then take a right and drive to 220th, then keep going; head down to 220th until you're halfway to your destination, then take a left and drive to 210th, then keep going; or head down to 220th and drive the whole way.

My wife, who grew up in the area, said 'that's stupid', drove down 210th the whole way, and got us there faster than we would have otherwise (because we weren't taking any left turns on busy routes the whole way).

Been driving into the city for 22 years, not as a cabbie but a frustrated commuter.

There is no knowledge that can predict a system as complicated as London, as you will see by the number of taxis wedged in all the traffic jams. The utility of the cabbie is mostly mysticism and religious thought if you ask me.

However, the all seeing eye of Google Maps for example which aggregates just about every bit of info there is is all powerful. "drive home" - 42 mins, 8 mins of traffic, pick a route, gets worse on the way home, "faster route found!"

Yeah, this isn't the USA with it's perpendicular grid of streets, named 1st street, 2nd street etc

It's also a really small sample size. You'd could have gotten a similar result by comparing two Uber drivers, or two taxi drivers.

Also, I wonder whether the taxi drove in a bus lane (which are off limits to Uber drivers and regular people), and whether that impacted the journey time.

Exactly, 2 different taxis could just as easily have arrived 4 minutes apart, and the bus lanes are a significant advantage either way. A 4 minute difference doesn't sound too bad.

The benefits of a registered taxi in London are obviously a lot more significant than getting to Parliament from the station four minutes quicker than Uber. I'm sure you understand this and you're just commenting on the speed of passenger delivery.

It's a beautifully quirky institution with a lot of character, whose intent and principle effect is to prevent people from entering into an honest trade to the advantage of their families and customers.

It is very easy to distinguish between an Uber and a black cab, so if black cabs are systematically better than the combination of Google and a GPS, the market will work it out in a few weeks.

> It's a beautifully quirky institution with a lot of character, whose intent and principle effect is to prevent people from entering into an honest trade to the advantage of their families and customers.

This test is only for people wishing to drive Black cabs. This test does not exist for drivers other regular taxis in London. Very many taxi companies exist and people are free to drive for those companies.

Uber wants to operate as a black cab without the protections to the fare paying passengers that black cabs offer. For example: all black cabs are wheelchair accessible. Almost no Uber cars are.

I'm not sure how Uber manages to generate so much hype around restrictive business regulation when there's nothing preventing them operating as licensed taxis in London. Nothing, that is, apart from their desire to use untested unregulated uncalibrated software to meter the rides.

> Uber wants to operate as a black cab without the protections to the fare paying passengers that black cabs offer. For example: all black cabs are wheelchair accessible. Almost no Uber cars are.

Wouldn't that only be an issue if the customer was unaware that Uber cars aren't guaranteed to be accessible? That seems like a peculiar example to use, because for each customer the worst case scenario would be calling an Uber once, realizing it's not accessible, then always using the licensed black cabs from then on.

Black cabs have a monopoly on hailing and taximeters at the cost of certain regulations. Wheelchair access is one of those regulations. Other obvious ones include TfL-set fares, and the requirement to accept any fare within a certain radius.

The latter two regulations are likely to engender a "who cares" response - the TfL fares are (currently) higher than Uber, and the nature of Uber hailing means that the vehicle you board will take you to your requested destination.

Uber enables smartphone-based hailing and uncertified taximeters, without enforcing the other rules. Therefore, all the advantages of both minicabs and taxis are available to the operator, but without the disadvantages peculiar to each.

You might say that this workaround is a clever disruption of an established, outdated business model, but if Uber drives a significant number of cabbies out of business, then how are independent wheelchair users going to get around efficiently? Buses are already overcrowded at peak times, and not all physically disabled people are as agile as Bumper Harris.

Black cabs get some advantages. In return they have to provide extra services that other taxis do not.

If Uber wants the advantages that Black cabs get they need to provide all the services a Black cab provides - in this example all black cabs can take a wheelchair. Thus, if Uber wNts the same advantages granted to Black cabs they need to have a fully wheelchair accessible fleet. If Uber is unwilling to provide that they are free to compete with regular licensed taxis without getting the advantages provided to black cabs.

"untested unregulated uncalibrated software" like any other GPS system that millions of people and truck drivers rely on everyday without issue?

Those drivers aren't using the software to charge people, and that's where regulation gets involved.

Just as grocers have calibrated scales to weigh items for charging cab drivers have calibrated meters which prevent tampering and ensure known pricing.

For some reason it's controversial but you are correct.

Uber do not provide a fare in advance, as with all private mini cabs in the UK. They are doing a metered service which I understood to be illegal except for black cabs. It's pretty simple.

My main worry is the demise of cheap local cab firms. You can easily get a fare 40% less than Addison Lee or a black cab by going to your local cab firm.

Indeed many bars and clubs have a legal requirement to station a taxi attendant outside to make sure people can get home safe at 4am (black cabs will be impossible at that time for most areas).

Valid concern, tbh - but I guess (at least in London), you've got three/four tiers of cabs now - Black Cabs, Uber, Kabbee/TaxiCabit registered minicabs, and tiny local firms that aren't on those systems - I suspect it might be the last ones that either get squashed out or forced onto the new tech.

(Also - try getting a blac cab to take you back to Peckham from the centre of London basically any time after 6pm, nightmare. /sarfovdarivva)

> (Also - try getting a blac cab to take you back to Peckham from the centre of London basically any time after 6pm

Yup. in fact I was standing outside a restaurant on the Strand at 1am recently. The doorman of the restaurant was trying to hail us and the group behind us a cab. Cab pulls up, hears destination, and drives off. They do this fast so you don't have time to grab their number and report them (which i encourage everyone to do should they refuse a fair).

Of course if the Taxi driver had realised it was for Alan Rickman and Zoe Wannamaker then perhaps he may have changed his mind.

The taxi driver monopoly doesn't just affect other transport providers. It affects regular drivers, too, who are not permitted to use roads as fully.

I used to drive on this road each day, on the way home from work: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-15537747

Occasionally a taxi would zoom past, able to save 15-20 minutes vs. my own journey time, by skipping the heavy traffic.

> prevent people from entering into an honest trade to the advantage of their families and customers

...and to detriment of the rest of the population. Most of London is still based on its medieval city plan(ie no plan exists) and the carrying capacity of the roads are particularly lower compared to similarly sized cities. Controlling the number vehicles which do abrupt stops is a good idea.

A lot of detractors miss the fact that the Knowledge is about much more than just memorising routes.

The Knowledge is a very egalitarian way of hugely increasing the value of a taxi permit to the holder, creating a strong disincentive against any behaviour that might jeopardise their license. If you've spent four or five years working to get your Green Badge, you'll think twice about cheating a passenger or taking liberties with traffic laws.

The exams ("appearances") are conducted in person, and are deliberately intended to be highly stressful. Examiners want to see not only that the candidate knows the routes, but that they can remain calm and courteous under pressure. By design, the Knowledge is a long and arduous test of character that happens to impart practical skills.

If your interest has been piqued by this article, there is an excellent (albeit slightly dated) BBC documentary on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvFKh_3evC8&list=PL759B26B05... http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007796l/modern-times-s...

It is also worth noting that the iconic black cab is a perfectly designed tool for the job, not just a kitsch symbol. It is fully wheelchair accessible, has a durable wipe-clean interior, and is designed with a very tight turning circle to maximise manoeuvrability in the tight streets of London.

There's a fairly decent little film that follows four (fictional) characters seeking to aquire "The Knowledge".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082624/

My anecdote for how well memorized london cabbies are. I used to live on a small street in central-ish London. See link below. I would regularly catch cabs from the city home. Out of many trips only once did a cabbie ask me where the road is. I replied 'Near Holland Rd" and he knew it straight off. This street was a few hundred meters and had nothing special going for it like popular shops etc. It never ceased to amaze me that every cabbie knew this tiny street in all London.

Elsham Rd: http://bit.ly/ZgyJx6

> The Uber driver did the run from the newspaper's office in King's Cross to Big Ben, in Westminster, in 22 minutes; the cabbie did it in 18, by taking a slightly longer route he knew to be quicker.

A lot of times "disruptive" innovations are initially not as good as what they compete against, but are "good enough" and better in some other way: cheaper, smaller, faster, easier to use, or something like that that lets new people use them.

I've had plenty of incidents where I've had to direct a black cab driver to my destination (all of which were within zone 2 in London). I assume they weren't authorised cabbies and were borrowing/renting the cab from someone else. This was all in the pre-uber era. I guess the cost of taking the knowledge was high enough to warrant illegally subletting their licensees.

I wonder if NYC's cabbie test is anywhere near as rigorous (if, in fact, there is one to speak of), as I can't think of any other taxi-centric city.

AFAIK, NYC cabbies just have to do a 6 hour driving course, no knowledge of city geography required. (http://on.nyc.gov/WHwxgi)

Which is why there are 6x as many complaints-per-taxi about NYC taxis vs London taxis:

http://learntheknowledge.co.uk/learning-the-knowledge-infogr...

(and almost no complaints about London cabbies not knowing their way around!)

Can't be. I've had some atrocious drivers in NYC including on two occasions having to use google maps on my phone to help them in Downtown Manhattan and one got completely lost in BK.

I'd probably add Bangkok to that list. Loads and loads of taxis here.

China, too.

Taxis in China are incredibly cheap - depending on city, base fare ranges from approximately 8 to 13 Yuan for the first 3 km (around 2 miles), with each additional km around 2 Yuan. Also depending on city is the driver's 'knowledge' but usually it is quite good.

Several Uber style apps to hail a taxi have taken off, the most widespread seeming to be 快的打车 but used by licensed taxi drivers only and fare calculated via the meter. Getting a license doesn't seem hard depending on carriage company and ability to drive dangerously.

Who consistently can't find major landmarks; I have occasionally opted for an Uber in Bangkok when I want a taxi that's going to be hassle free. Back from the airport, too, as when I get off a long flight, I don't want to be arguing about whether I'm going to get on the meter or not.

  I don't want to be arguing about whether I'm going to get on the meter or not.

That never happened to me, when grabbing a cab at any of the two Bangkok airports. As a matter of fact the service there works pretty well.

What did happen, though, was that I got into a taxi with a doctored meter. This could range from a fairly innocuous 20% surcharge (which is still not OK, to be sure) to meters in cardiac arrest mode, charging about factor 15 (literally).

Within city limits the situation may be different. My experience is that when you get into a cab, which is parking at one of the more touristy areas they try to take you for a ride and are rarely willing to engage their meters.

There's usually never a discussion if meter, or not, if you hail a cab on the street.

This only applies to Bangkok. In other places in Thailand it's practically impossible to get the driver to engage the meter, even if he's (it's almost always a he) legally required to do so.

Note to first time visitors: Not engaging the meter and agreeing on a flat fee is always a bad deal. 5$ may seem cheap to you. But for the same ride you would have paid 1/3rd of the price with the meter engaged.

> That never happened to me, when grabbing a cab at any of the two Bangkok airports. As a matter of fact the service there works pretty well.

That's because from the airport they charge an extra 50 bath fee so they know they will get more than enough. Especially since I imagine lots of people go to the BTS/MRT which is 100 baht give or take + the extra 50.

> Who consistently can't find major landmarks.

I was going to write this, but I didn't because It might just be that their pronunciation of things are just way different. I spent maybe 5 minutes saying "tuk tuk" to a friend, and finally she said "ooohhhhh duk duk", just a sliiiiight pronunciation difference. I can imagine names of things (landmarks) are even more sensitive.

This is absolutely true, and I lived on a road which I was able to describe in Thai well before I could pronounce in Thai for a while. But also: many of them came from Isaan two weeks ago, and are still trying to figure out where Sathorn is.

Do they even have a test? If I ask for a hotel in Manhattan the cabbie normally asks me where it is.

I far prefer this system to the nyc medallion system. It still underprovisions taxis, essentially a tax on riders, but gives them a better experience.

Sorry, completely off topic, but does anyone know a name for this American style of headline writing "For [subject of the story], [story overview]"?

It's always stuck out to me so I'd like to put a name to it. You don't see headlines written like this in the UK.

This is the general grammatical term for that sort of construct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apposition The "For" bit does seem somewhat unique to this style of headline, and I don't know the name (or if there even is a name) for that as a whole.

Which is why London taxis are so damn expensive, and why UbiCab, Addison Lee, and Uber provide such an amazing service.

Amazing is not the adjective I would use. Uber is a terrible experience in London (which is a HARD city to navigate).

I don't live in London. Whenever I hail a cab I have a semblance of where I'm going and not much else. It is a pleasure (and worth the extra) for my driver to know exactly how to get me where I'm going, even when I might not know.

In my experience, Uber drivers require me to know the exact address, including post code. Even with GPS, they often get lost, confused, and take bad routes.

You have to book on a mobile - I just look up the postcode and insert it as my destination before I order the Uber.

When they turn up, the Uber app sat-navs them to exactly where I asked to be.

Not tricky. Minicabs wouldn't know where attractions were either.

UberX is often half the price or less of a black cab. Convenience against cost is something you have to sum up for yourself, but it's far from a terrible experience.

I've taken cabs in many places and a lot are worse than Uber but one thing I've never had to worry about with the black cabs is the level of service. If I'm going into the buroughs then I chose Uber. But if I'm going into central London then the black cab, hands down.

Until these new cab services get access to bus and restricted lanes there simply is no comparison.

Yeap but if we want to be fair, we either have to pass Uber drivers through the same procedure or we should lower the barrier for the cabbies.

No we don't. Uber are free to operate without their drivers passing the knowledge if Uber choses to compete against taxis - pre booked pickups (no hailing from the side of the road) and pre-arranged prices (not using illegal unchecked uncalibrated meters).

If Uber wants to use meters they need to comply with the regulations that come with meters.

Uber are free to operate without their drivers passing the knowledge if Uber choses to compete against taxis

Did you mean 'chooses to compete against minicabs'?

The black cab brand probably is enough to justify at least some additional training for higher rates. I'd probably pay a premium over Uber to have a really qualified driver (although safety would be my preference vs. knowing the roads).

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