Interesting article, but it failed to make mention of to what extent GPS based navigation apps have made acquiring "The Knowledge" obsolete. I'd hate to have spent the months or years of study required only to find out that similar routing information now fits in a shirt pocket.
Is there any evidence on this? Anecdotally, I have a far better experience with cabbies who don't use GPS. They are far more likely to know good routes.
There's a possible bias in that the better cabbies may be less likely to use GPS in the first place of course.
The Knowledge isn't live. It won't let you know about accidents or traffic pile-ups you should avoid.
I suppose you get to learn traffic patterns over time, but without live traffic reporting there's no way to avoid getting stuck in gridlock around an accident.
Traditionally, aspiring London cabbies would buy a small scooter with a clip board and putt putt along the standard routes.
I'm wondering now how much of that experience can be replaced with Street View now.
Street view itself is out of date (Charing Cross footage was taken around August 2014). It won't be able to show you non-static nuances, or road conditions. For example, some sets of lights may be more notoriously slow than others to change. Street view won't show you which roundabouts has the bigger problems with congestion, etc.
You're right that The Knowledge itself is not "live" however for those who pass the test and do become cab drivers, they will inevitably get near-live data as they drive around doing their job, and conversing with other drivers, police, council workers over the course of time and learn about changing to traffic conditions.
I think TheOtherHobbes is referring to Google Maps and Waze, not Streetview. Google Maps and Waze, by collecting GPS movements from users, absolutely will learn about light timings, which roundabouts are congested and when, etc. with enough of a sample.
I mean wouldn't it be even better to replace that experience with Uber? drive uber for a few years while going to classes for the knowledge, so that you can make money while doing exactly the reinforcement you need to upgrade to the black cabs?
The learning required and the exams to test it are likely highly structured, whereas Uber driving would be fairly random. It could help, but perhaps might also hinder.
Having lived a number of years in London, both before and after Uber made an appearance, my experience is that black cab drivers generally have a better idea of where things are and how to get there – without the need of GPS – however that's not to say they provide better service.
More than once have I had to tell my black cab driver that he's going down an inefficient route, and it's obvious (albeit difficult to prove) that this was on purpose to jack up the price for the ride. Worse: there's no one I can call for a refund. In contrast, I've contacted Uber when this has happened with their drivers and always been given credits to make up the difference. Credits are no refund, for sure, but on the other hand I've kept using the service so I suppose it works out much the same.
On the other hand, more than once have I had to actually give my Uber driver turn-by-turn directions because the Uber app is terrible with routing, the driver ignores it, or both.
My best experience in London has been with Uber exec. The cars are nicer, the drivers are generally more knowledgeable and professional, and most importantly they've learned to not rely on Uber's crappy mapping but rather use some other device to figure out the best route. More often than not, this means Google Maps (which, I think, Uber uses as well yet still manages to be useless) and some creative use of intermediate turns to avoid traffic – knowledge that likely comes from experience driving down London's streets as opposed to studying maps in a class room.
There was a brief moment, before Uber had any significant presence in London, that an app called Hailo provided an Uber like experience but only contracted black cabs. This worked quite well, since they solved the two worst problems with black cabs, in my opinion:
1. Finding one
2. Paying for it (most only deal in cash)
Uber obviously fixed both of these, but also provides more comfortable cars (at least on the exec level) and more often than not more professional drivers (hit and miss, the UberX level is a lottery.)
My typical experience with black cab drivers is that they are middle aged white males with a very conservative and xenophobic world view, lack of respect for women, and not afraid to share it. I'm white, and male, but still find this very uncomfortable and not something I like to support financially. Only once have I encountered a female black cab driver, and we even discussed that fact. She told me that she estimated the number of female drivers to be around 10% of the driver workforce, but I've seen numbers[1] to suggest it's much lower than that.
In any event, these days if I have to travel to London, I exclusively use Uber Exec, simply because I find that service seems to hit the sweet spot of professionalism, service, and comfort, at a price that's still cheaper than a black cab – and I don't have to carry cash. That said, I feel no loyalty to Uber and if there was a competitor that could provide an experience with a more consistent track record (as mentioned UberX is hit-and-miss) I probably wouldn't hesitate to try them out.
Black Cab drivers have zero incentive to prolong a route to increase the fare. The pickup fee premium (the charge for simply stepping in the cab) means they want to edecute the route as fast as possible so thry can do more pickups.
A black cab drivers ideal life would be a non stop series of 100 yard journeys.
That is a good observation, but it does scale with the supply/demand ratio. If the demand is slack, and getting 100 yard journeys would be difficult, then this is not necessarily true anymore.
Ah! This would explain why those times I felt the driver was intentionally taking a (much) longer route where always late at night, when going home to an area where it'd be unlikely for them to catch a fare going back the other way simply due to there being little to no foot traffic around.
there's also survivorship bias, cabbies that don't use GPS and suck at it don't survive. And also confirmation bias or broken windows - you don't necessarily know what the route could have been... Finally GPS can provide information that knowing a good route can never do - up-to-date traffic.
Professional drivers who rely on GPS and do not know the city roads can be absolutely terrible drivers. They often watch the GPS rather than the road, crawl dangerously slowly looking for their destination, cut across traffic because they're in the wrong lane, and put their hazard lights on as carte blanche to do all this. Just awful to share road space with.
It will depend very much on the types of location information passengers give, and routing flexibility they want.
To give examples based on http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/t-magazine/london-taxi-tes... , consider "Take me to that gay bar near George Court", or how to bypass "construction that has sprung up on Regent Street." It also points out that currently "black cabs have triumphed in staged races against cars using GPS".
Over time I have no doubt that more of this information will be in routing systems, but that's difficult to acquire, and crowd-sourcing attempts are subject to spamming.
One of the hardest aspects of automation is reproducing the quality of human labor. The first generations of automation are rarely as high-quality as handmade things but automation is still pursued because it can be less expensive.
I worked for a delivery company in the Bay Area at two different times and the first time I had to learn every street of two cities, and the second time I was provided with printed out turn by turn directions for another city. The 'knowledge' part was horrible to learn but I eventually enjoyed knowing it (during my time with the company), while the printed GPS part was easy to use the whole time.
So the question becomes is there a reason nowadays to learn the 'knowledge' part by heart? Not really. It's nice to know while you need it but is otherwise quite useless information because it doesn't teach you anything.
There's something to be said both about "doing things right" having a certain beauty over "doing the right things", and "doing the right things" being vastly more important than "doing things just right".
There are parallels to anything from higher education, to computing, to productivity, to art, to academia...
20 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 42.2 ms ] threadThere's a possible bias in that the better cabbies may be less likely to use GPS in the first place of course.
I suppose you get to learn traffic patterns over time, but without live traffic reporting there's no way to avoid getting stuck in gridlock around an accident.
Traditionally, aspiring London cabbies would buy a small scooter with a clip board and putt putt along the standard routes.
I'm wondering now how much of that experience can be replaced with Street View now.
You're right that The Knowledge itself is not "live" however for those who pass the test and do become cab drivers, they will inevitably get near-live data as they drive around doing their job, and conversing with other drivers, police, council workers over the course of time and learn about changing to traffic conditions.
More than once have I had to tell my black cab driver that he's going down an inefficient route, and it's obvious (albeit difficult to prove) that this was on purpose to jack up the price for the ride. Worse: there's no one I can call for a refund. In contrast, I've contacted Uber when this has happened with their drivers and always been given credits to make up the difference. Credits are no refund, for sure, but on the other hand I've kept using the service so I suppose it works out much the same.
On the other hand, more than once have I had to actually give my Uber driver turn-by-turn directions because the Uber app is terrible with routing, the driver ignores it, or both.
My best experience in London has been with Uber exec. The cars are nicer, the drivers are generally more knowledgeable and professional, and most importantly they've learned to not rely on Uber's crappy mapping but rather use some other device to figure out the best route. More often than not, this means Google Maps (which, I think, Uber uses as well yet still manages to be useless) and some creative use of intermediate turns to avoid traffic – knowledge that likely comes from experience driving down London's streets as opposed to studying maps in a class room.
There was a brief moment, before Uber had any significant presence in London, that an app called Hailo provided an Uber like experience but only contracted black cabs. This worked quite well, since they solved the two worst problems with black cabs, in my opinion:
1. Finding one 2. Paying for it (most only deal in cash)
Uber obviously fixed both of these, but also provides more comfortable cars (at least on the exec level) and more often than not more professional drivers (hit and miss, the UberX level is a lottery.)
My typical experience with black cab drivers is that they are middle aged white males with a very conservative and xenophobic world view, lack of respect for women, and not afraid to share it. I'm white, and male, but still find this very uncomfortable and not something I like to support financially. Only once have I encountered a female black cab driver, and we even discussed that fact. She told me that she estimated the number of female drivers to be around 10% of the driver workforce, but I've seen numbers[1] to suggest it's much lower than that.
In any event, these days if I have to travel to London, I exclusively use Uber Exec, simply because I find that service seems to hit the sweet spot of professionalism, service, and comfort, at a price that's still cheaper than a black cab – and I don't have to carry cash. That said, I feel no loyalty to Uber and if there was a competitor that could provide an experience with a more consistent track record (as mentioned UberX is hit-and-miss) I probably wouldn't hesitate to try them out.
[1]: https://www.cglloyds.co.uk/news/2015/02/12/interview-with-Lo...
A black cab drivers ideal life would be a non stop series of 100 yard journeys.
By car, Google Maps says "Poplar, Blackwall & District Rowing Club" to "Greenwich Pier" ( https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Poplar,+Blackwall+%26+Distri... ) takes 6.9 miles and 22 minutes.
Using the Greenwich Foot Tunnel under the Thames, it takes 7 minutes to walk the 0.3 miles.
To give examples based on http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/t-magazine/london-taxi-tes... , consider "Take me to that gay bar near George Court", or how to bypass "construction that has sprung up on Regent Street." It also points out that currently "black cabs have triumphed in staged races against cars using GPS".
Over time I have no doubt that more of this information will be in routing systems, but that's difficult to acquire, and crowd-sourcing attempts are subject to spamming.
So the question becomes is there a reason nowadays to learn the 'knowledge' part by heart? Not really. It's nice to know while you need it but is otherwise quite useless information because it doesn't teach you anything.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/t-magazine/london-taxi-tes...
There's something to be said both about "doing things right" having a certain beauty over "doing the right things", and "doing the right things" being vastly more important than "doing things just right".
There are parallels to anything from higher education, to computing, to productivity, to art, to academia...