Licensed London Taxi Drivers: How They Navigate And What We Can Learn From Them.

摘要

Within a six-mile radius around Charing Cross, black cab drivers - in order to earn their green badge - are required to be able to identify the street of any potential place a customer might want to be picked up from as well as any place they might be interested in going to. They need to be able to give an exact, consecutive verbal recall of all travelled streets that form a route along the direct line between these locations, including directions for turns and roundabouts. This so-called Knowledge of London encompasses almost 60 000 streets and 100 000 points of interest related to different sectors such as tourism, leisure, sports, housing, health, education and administration [1,2]. One might ask: How can taxi drivers learn this vast amount of information and what can we learn from them using it? About two decades ago, 320 origin-destination pairs - the most famous one being the first from Manor House Station to Gibson Square - were selected to create 'runs' (as taxi drivers call the routes) and build the basic framework to train students in knowledge schools to become taxi drivers. For each run, students not only identify and learn the most direct route between the two points in both directions (which might differ due to oneway systems and turning restrictions), but they also learn important points of interest and the streets that join them in the 14 mile radius around each origin and destination. This collection of runs is now known as the Blue Book, and it covers London systematically in four layers of 80 runs each, creating a network of routes that becomes denser the further the students progress.