To not understand the point of black cabs now?

[Userlavender]

Aside from all the uber controversy (i use addison lee and local minicabs) can someone please tell me - what is the point of black cabs in 2017?!

They are insanely expensive, surely the knowledge is irrelevant now that everyone has satnav and they love going the long way round to get extra £££? This has happened to me a few times. Cab to the airport using my local minicab which sends driver details and tracking is £18. With a black cab the estimate is 'about £80'. Surely they are no longer sustainable due to prices? Am I missing something? Who are all these people who pay black cabs their ridiculous prices?

They charge double I would pay in my mini cab. I use taxies 4/5 times a week, so I for not afford to do what I do, if it were not for my reasonable mini cab company.

yy IceCream

I can't add a link because my iPad is buggering about but the Independent did a really interesting article the other day entitled 'Did Uber Really Deserve to be Banned in London'. It discusses their use of Greyball software, the fact that they aren't completing adequate background checks, their attitude towards their employees and the fact that women in the company are highlighting misogyny. Perhaps someone more IT literate than I am could post a link?

I'm not keen on the tube and the bus takes forever, so I regularly use black cabs. I love them. I feel safe and I've never had a bad experience in decades of using them. Long may they continue.

Naimh McIntyre article for The Independent from Friday 22nd September

Addison Lee was never a perfect harmony. Black cabbies hated them until they had bigger competition.

They have failed to innovate and deserve all they get now. The writing has been on the wall for ages and they've just been fighting it rather than adapting and innovating.

You can t stop the apps.

Ryan air cancelling flights due to shortage of pilots, Uber drivers losing their 'jobs' - time for a bit of joined up thinking?

What is a black cab ?

does not compute outside central London

I live over 100 miles outside London and black cabs are plentiful in the city I live in and in many other cities in the country.

Do cities outside London that have black cabs have an equivalent of the Knowledge?

Ryan air cancelling flights due to shortage of pilots, Uber drivers losing their 'jobs' - time for a bit of joined up thinking?

The Ryan air problem is simular to why some rail orpperators face shortages of drivers. Other company offer better wages and terms and condition so often steal staff of lower paid 'feeder' companies like Ryan air.

They do where I live. In fact I got a Black Cab from Birmingham city centre to my home street in Coventry. He did not use a satnav and found the way no problems. When I told him the address. He said is that off *** road, I said yes. I was so impressed.

Reply to BoomBoomsCousin above

I love black cabs. Totally worth the extra cash especially in London. I find uber a bit creepy tbh - just some random turning up in a normal car gives me the frights. Probably I am an old fart. There is just something timeless and lovely about being in a black cab in London, especially at Christmas.

Banning uber seems very draconian but hopefully they will up their game in terms of licensing so the drivers are vetted. It's an unacceptable risk at the moment. I still won't be using them though.

Did anyone hear the chap from Radio York on R4 the other day. It was so true about how people in London have more transport choices than the rest of the country put together. In some places you have to wait days for a bus.

OP you seem to have a weird hatred of black cab drivers.

I will happily pay the extra for a black cab - the knowledge of the city, the ability to dodge the traffic and (with some exceptions), the banter.

Easy to get in and out of, easy to flag down, properly regulated.

They are part of our heritage and culture and should be supported.

I will never use Uber.

I've used both black cabs and uber frequently, and for me the only difference is price. Uber executive cars are just as nice if not nicer than a black cab. The last few times I have got a black cab from Marylebone station the drivers have used satnav not 'the knowledge' and quite often they couldn't find or didn't know where my flat was, and it really wasn't hard as it was literally overlooking a popular public art gallery.

We used uber to move house before we had lots of big bits of furniture as it was so so much cheaper than a removal firm. I have never had a bad experience with uber and will be sad to see it go, I always felt much safer in a cab or uber on the way home from a night out than I did on the tube or bus, and living in south London uber was much easier to access and cheaper.

But I never ever get into any sort of taxi alone because I think it is foolhardy to get into any car with someone you don't know, my DM drummed this into me from an early age after a friend's dad sent me home from a sleepover in a taxi as he had too much to drink to take me himself as he was supposed to.

My dh had an awful experience with Uber the only time he tried to use it. He got his money back through PayPal, because another thing Uber do not do properly is deal with complaints. Needless to say, his opinion of Uber's business practices does not match yours, silkpyjamas. And they won't go - London is too big a market for them to just let it go. It would be nice if they stopped breaking so many rules and getting chucked out of so many cities around the world, though - they do not need to be so shit on certain fronts. They have the ability to behave better.

Black cabs are ruinously expensive if you are by yourself and going a long way (or in heavy traffic), but for a short hop across the city, especially with a group of people, it can be cheaper than taking the tube. (Most of the time it's not cheaper, of course, but 4 or 5 people doing a short hop can be!)

I have taken plenty of black cabs in London in my time (mostly for work) and I have never ever had any of them use a satnav.

There was a study that compared doing The Knowledge to doing a PhD, in comparing the effects that it has on the brain of the person doing it.

silkpyjamasallday The price is not the only difference. The other is that the cab mafia (overwhelmingly white and male) is trying to shut down the competition where Uber (whose drivers come on all shapes and colours) is willing to meet it.

What exactly is the unacceptable risk with uber? The stats show that the tiny percent of crimes committed by Uber drivers is about the same as all crimes committed by tfl licensed drivers.

You support black cabs if you like, they are supported with their use of the bus lanes and ranks. But they don't just want support they want any competition banned. Even when work pay I refuse to use them.

I think maybe more regulation, higher standards and checks need to be improved and enforced across the industry. The private hire sector is too cowboy, I have private hire hires sent for me by work to transport me the 1hr drive between cities on a regular basis. A few drivers are professional but many are not and some unsafe. On the late night business journeys I have to keep an eye on them because they are often sleepy at the wheel. Sometimes its a case they have been working a full day job somewhere else before doing taxis in the night. Although I respect a strong work ethic and supporting their families back home they either don't understands the risks to them self or other or worse they don't care. Some drivers keep their cars immaculate, some a right shit tip. The rubbish drivers don't last long but there ranks are quickly filled with another diver of the same poor standard. I ask one of our regular drivers what happened to the ones I don't see any more. He say thingy got too many speeding fines or in one case he even said one of their drivers got busted for drink driving while a work. The company that provides our work taxis literally will sign up and person with a banger and satnav. And I know the low standards and easiness to be a private cab driver annoys the long term professional drivers in the company. The current system really is not fair to private hire drivers who do work to professional standards. Sure tighter regulation would put up prices but would give the consumer a better quality and safer service.

I totally agree OP.

They are outrageously expensive and I don't see any point in paying a premium for 'the knowledge' when a sat nav does that job just as well.

They have been slow to innovate and it's only very recently that they deigned to accept cards .

I got sick of listening to the bigoted, racist shit they come out with, which (to be fair) is much more of a problem with black cabbies than Addison lee/Uber.

Mini-cab companies offer much better value.

Black cabs are so much cheaper if you use a larger no-transfer wheelchair. SO MUCH. It's £70 + driver at minimum to hire the community WAV, and that's heavily subsidised and not available everywhere; a private WAV hire is more like £1000 - it cost over a grand to hire a suitable WAV for my DH to move house, more than it cost to move the entire contents of my house including packing and unpacking. And Motability, man, just to get the adaptations done for DH's chair is £8000 cash up front plus £50 a week plus driver plus petrol. Black cab drivers are all trained, they've got all the gear; they're great.

I'm pretty sure they'll go; I can't see how the economic model can work. But they are great, really great, for disabled access. I assure you.

I am not fussed about the banter, or knowlege, I would rather sit and read a book or look through my e mails in the cab, its just not worth the price. You also get banter from the mini cabs. I use taxis about 4-6 times a week, as I live in a semi rural location where the bus service is patchy. I simply could not afford to travel if I had to pay the high prices of black taxi. It would be double my usual price.

I got talking to an ex black cabbie, who collected me, and he said the reason why they are high, is that you pay for the journey there and for the cab to go back to its base, which you don't do with a mini cabs, their jobs are on the go.

My understanding is that uber is so keen to not be deemed to be employing drivers that they take zero interest in who is driving for them - and particularly their criminal records, immigration status, road worthiness of cars, personal hygiene etc. There is obviously a market for it because they are cheaper - but I don't want to take the risk and so I will stick to black cabs as long as possible.

And learning a map off by heart isn't a skill - anyone could do that if they took about 3 years to do it

Yes. A skill that can take up to three years to learn (a 'skill' being a learned ability).