GPS in London

Dunno...'The knowledge' as it is called is probably still a good way to select taxi drivers, there are doubtless too many people wanting to become licenced cabbies, it probably separates the wheat from the chaffe. You still need the knowledge to get you around the traffic jams GPS has plenty of dead spots in the city and it only needs a couple of roads blocked by roadworks to completely screw it up.
Only the other day we were driving to the Barbican to see Bobby McFerrin. The GPS sent us wrong near our destination, but we were sufficiently au fait with the area to get there despite it.
Anyow, you leave our sherbets* alone allroight?
Del

(Rhyming slang... sherbet dab=cab)

I read that the latest version of GPS has a resolution of an arm length. Good thing to know in a pub. Keeps you from missing your mouth with that pint. Today being Independence Day for us; sorry about that.Cheerio

There is a book called "Can You Take These Tests?" The NYC cabbie test would be pretty challenging. There was a police detective test in there, and an air traffic controller test. Common sense can get you through many of these, after a fashion, but the most daunting by far was the British winemaster's test.

Chicago is more completely a Grid, than Manhattan. Think it is only above 14th street that it becomes more a grid since early above that was haphazard build according to lay of the land deer paths and all like that. Broadway is a long Avenue on a cant, angle, and then there is the Great Central Park.

I've looked at the map of Rome, as compared to the map of Manhattan, and I myself see similarities.

Even illogical street layouts can be made quickly understandable if a decent street directory is created. I drove a taxi in Rochester New York which some company produced a fine street directory for. Bought a street directory for Raleigh NC over a decade ago for a girlfriend who had to drive a good deal, and found the directory not so advanced as the one I used to get around ROC.

In a hurry you hardly have time for maps. Aint much more than important info on an IFR chart, whereas there is a great deal of pretty info on a VFR sectional.

If the London bureaucrats want to make it hard for taxi drivers, and anyone else to find their way around a town as old as London, guess they can, but its not like it is really fair to require people to memorize the world. I know for a fact aids to navigation have been created to be used by professionals long before GPS, that worked quick regardless of the grid.

Taxicab driving is close to a profession in London. Courtesy is an important part of cabbing. Maybe the government wants to keep all the Indians and Pakistanis off he roads so they don't end up like N.Y.C.

What's your point? Indians and Pakistanis are rude, so navigational tools that facilitate getting around are discouraged on purpose with good reason?

If I've ever been rude, and sometimes I have, mostly it was because I didn't have time for niceties. The most horrible cab ride I had in NYC was with some African guy driver who was greatly pimpled and had covered his dashboard with smelly pus balls.

As a professional driver the rudest thing I ever did was drive like a bat out of hell with an old lady in the back for a zone set up to make money.

I've regretted for a couple of decades and a half that ride I gave. My God the poor old lady probably never forgot that ride which normally ought ought to have taken 30 minutes, but I probably did in 17.

I really probably ought to have gone into race car driving, instead of the arts. The Jim Jarmush movie Life on Earth is one of his very best, far as I am concerned, but of course I am a professional driver.

For instance once I was told to follow the Director in the truck I was driving with all the film gear to a set. As they led me under a railroad bridge of 11 foot clearance, I stopped since I was 12'3. "Why did you stop!" What's wrong with you!"

Navigational aids like maps, and street directories and even radio controls ought to be standard equipment for the professional or unprofessional driver. Other issues are other issues. Regardless of the town, city, or nation, I am opposed to enforced stupidities on the part of bureaucratic functionaries intent on job security created by them for them and their class masters.

Yeah, they should bulldoze historic London and build it on a grid.
You only need the London underground and an A to Z to navigate in London. Or a scooter and an A to Z.

It just isn't a problem.

I was once asked by some American tourists, fearfull of going down into the tube as if it was the very gates of Hades 'Is this the right line for such and such'.
I said "it doesn't really work like that, just jump on a train look at the maps...if you don't like the way it's going, get off at the next station..."
It a very well designed system, many stations are just a couple of hundred yards appart.

Walking works very well too on a summers day...all those pretty ladies
Del

The NYC subway system is right good as well. Not perfect, but pretty darn good.

My own rule of thumb was to use the subway, or a bus for the mundane, but get a cab for critical trips. This operating procedure was caused by an incident where I was traveling from Brooklyn to the island, and was stuck underground for a half hour. That caused me to be late for a job, and lose a client. After that I moved to the island.

Thanks you for the post.

Hi guys, Im a newbie. Nice to join this forum.

http://moviesonlinefree.biz

In the land of OZ down here we like to make our streets start to look like a nice pattern but then sack the guy for doing a good job of planning & employ a couple of kids to scribble over the design. This creates a nightmare of a road system - the perfect solution for visitors to an area. The cabbie can take you on any number of routes depending on your timeline & ability to pay. Hint look poor & ask roughly how much to get you there then scratch around for some cash etc - they take you the shortest way. The cost of the fair is directly proportional to the cost of the clothes you are wearing.

Now if you want to fix up a GPS real good then try doing a lot of road re-building, close a few exits & open some others - works a treat. the GPS cannot keep up & they 2009 update was issued in Dec 2009 some the 2010 will be out of date by now - before it is issued.

My way is simple - spend about 10% of the cost of a GPS on this years street directory, memorise the route I will take & then pay attention to the road signs. I can get 10 directoies for the cost of 1 GPS (10 years vs a new GPS every 3 to 5 years + updates - who has the better cash-flow?)

I rarley get lost & if I do - well the shortest distance between 2 lines is not necessarily the most interesting. We were given brains & some how we have used then to invent things to stop us using them - Dohhh!

I also take cabs regularly as I do like to support local businesses but I do make sure I know which way I want to go.

My OP may not have been clear enough. First, my reference to certain ethnic groups is not intended in any way to be a disparaging remark. I know there is a large immigration of ethnic groups into the U.K. of which there is somewhat of a resentment. (invasion by a foreign culture). The same resentment is present in this country also and in others countries as well. Second, I was just wondering if GPS would work in a maze of streets, like London. If it would, then why would someone need or want to spend 3+ years memorizing the streets. Maps can be confusing.

I don't see where GPS would be out of date so quickly. Construction goes on, but the basic layout of streets and alleys doesn't change. I also made the comment that the latest GPS would be accurate to within an arm's length.

It is alright to make honest observations of the general differences and stereotypes of different nationalities and cultures. Some people like the Dutch insist in the US of continuing their homeland tradition of not tipping for service in a restaurant. (I swear to God "Restaurant" is one of the hardest (fornication under consent of the king in no good suits) of all time! I admit myself that when I drove a cab it was over a decade before any GPS at all, and I used a good street directory if I had no other idea from the radio dispatcher, or prior knowledge of where I needed to get to from where I was.

(When GPS was first known and coveted, it was coveted by Freighter aircraft pilots I knew, who put it in their planes long before it was FAA approved. At the time they told me it was purposefully made imprecise by at least 15 feet for commercial use, since precise is for cruise missiles. For a DC 6, 15 feet off or even more, is not much of a big deal, but for a car in an alley, it could well be.

This thing where a good right signal and great information to any GPS anywhere on the market in the world does have the potential of giving away brains to missile makers of dubious motives. This makes purpose paid subscriptions to commercially dedicated navigational aides, along with government vetting and licensing of the machines a wise defensive measure. We want to encourage our enemies to be lost, and as well incompetent.

Of course most people are blessed with incompetence as a birth gift similar to the genetic coding of lemmings. Some mothers have beaten their children with brooms to make them go to church or even school, but they are currently arrested for abuse and sent to prison now.

I suppose if I was going to open a Driving School I would hire as the Director a semi retired or retired pilot with a lot of international trips in his logbook.

When I drove a cab, I drove 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, at night, for 11 months, and you can bet by then I was half crazy all the time.

The job worse than that is being a Circulation Manager for a big city newspaper with 55 paperroutes to either hire for, or do yourself. Only reason more carnage is not associated with newpaper delivery in the past is the relatively clear streets at 4 to Sunrise AM.

In either case it is a good idea to have a gun, though not really for lack of sleep does a bad thing to your judgement.

P.S. A friend of mine who had also done the Paper Route thing tells of being out in the urban delivering papers. Two guys came running up with knives saying, "Give us your wallets!" He pointed a 9 millimeter pistol at them and said, "I got a better idea, give us your wallets." - nother cab driver I knew hit the gas and smashed the robber holding a gun on him between the door and a tree.

It gets crazy out there...

A London cabbie told me once that they had to spend a year on a bicycle delivering parcels before getting their cabbie's license. That was some years before the advent of GPS.

Yeah, and they tell bankers all over the world right out of college to write new rules and make up mistakes that will provide job security for their lifetimes.

No wonder there was a rebellion in the Americas, since angled shovels were illegal. The stamp act aint nothing compared to enforced stupidities of manufacture and design innovations pioneered by half mad inventors with nothing left to lose.

I mean good good almighty, some of the laws and regs out England drove smart people to jump ship. When the inheritance tax was so greatly increased Nevil Shute moved to Australia.

What kills me is that even in England and the US they will cut budgets for schools when times are tough. By now you would think mature governments and economically challenged states would understand that that sort of action insures more spiraling poverty.

Haiti is one screwed up place. We don't have to worry they will overtake our economies since most of them can't read either English or French. Who with money wants to invest in nations where half the people can't read any written word in any language?

Where was I?