On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 02:03:30PM -0000, Basil Jet wrote:

Taxis need to be hailable on red routes - without that, London would become,
in tourists' eyes, the only city in the world where the taxis would always
sail past and never pick you up. The huge number of one-way roads and banned
turns mean that a taxi pulling around a corner from a red route to pick
someone up might be putting the fare up by a fiver - it would significantly
reducing the capacity of the fleet to carry people home at busy times. Taxis
setting down on red routes is harder to justify.

Surely it can be justified on exactly the same grounds - without that,
London would become, in tourists' eyes, the only city in the world where
when you tell a taxi driver to take you to the Hotel De Posh he drops
you a hundred metres down the road for no good reason.

Since minicabs are only supposed to perform pre-booked journeys, I see
little justification for allowing them to pick up on red routes

because people want to be picked up from the Hotel De Posh, perhaps?

because
finding the right person, checking they are the right person and
reprogramming the satnav takes so much longer than someone hailing a taxi,
saying where they are going and zooming away.

Not really. Whenever I use a minicab it takes no time at all for the
driver to find me and verify that I'm the right person. *He* doesn't
have to find *me*, *I* find *him*, by looking at all the approaching
vehicles and finding the one that looks like the vehicle the dispatcher
described to me over the phone. He verifies that I'm the right guy by
asking "Mr Cantrell?", and I say "yes". As for programming the satnav -
surely he would have done that before setting off. It's true that the
satnav I had a few years ago couldn't handle trips with multiple stops,
but modern ones can. And for an awful lot of trips, they won't need to
use it anyway.

--
David Cantrell | Enforcer, South London Linguistic Massive

Compromise: n: lowering my standards so you can meet them

On 1 Mar, 13:44, David Cantrell wrote:
On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 02:03:30PM -0000, Basil Jet wrote:
Taxis need to be hailable on red routes - without that, London would become,
in tourists' eyes, the only city in the world where the taxis would always
sail past and never pick you up. The huge number of one-way roads and banned
turns mean that a taxi pulling around a corner from a red route to pick
someone up might be putting the fare up by a fiver - it would significantly
reducing the capacity of the fleet to carry people home at busy times. Taxis
setting down on red routes is harder to justify.

Surely it can be justified on exactly the same grounds - without that,
London would become, in tourists' eyes, the only city in the world where
when you tell a taxi driver to take you to the Hotel De Posh he drops
you a hundred metres down the road for no good reason.

Since minicabs are only supposed to perform pre-booked journeys, I see
little justification for allowing them to pick up on red routes

because people want to be picked up from the Hotel De Posh, perhaps?

Last time I used the Hotel de Posh, it had it's own driveway where
they could pull in.

On 1 Mar, 16:57, MIG wrote:
On 1 Mar, 13:44, David Cantrell wrote:





On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 02:03:30PM -0000, Basil Jet wrote:
Taxis need to be hailable on red routes - without that, London would become,
in tourists' eyes, the only city in the world where the taxis would always
sail past and never pick you up. The huge number of one-way roads and banned
turns mean that a taxi pulling around a corner from a red route to pick
someone up might be putting the fare up by a fiver - it would significantly
reducing the capacity of the fleet to carry people home at busy times. Taxis
setting down on red routes is harder to justify.

Surely it can be justified on exactly the same grounds - without that,
London would become, in tourists' eyes, the only city in the world where
when you tell a taxi driver to take you to the Hotel De Posh he drops
you a hundred metres down the road for no good reason.

Since minicabs are only supposed to perform pre-booked journeys, I see
little justification for allowing them to pick up on red routes

because people want to be picked up from the Hotel De Posh, perhaps?

Last time I used the Hotel de Posh, it had it's own driveway where
they could pull in.

The Devil crept in and inserted an apostrophe. I deny all
responsibility.

On Mon, Mar 01, 2010 at 08:57:47AM -0800, MIG wrote:

Last time I used the Hotel de Posh, it had it's own driveway where
they could pull in.

Many Hotels des Posheaux do, or at least have a designated taxi drop-off
area, but that designated area is the same place that taxis hang around
(perfectly legitimately) to pick people up, so a driver dropping a
passenger may have to stop outside the designated area.

And there's bound to be a few exceptions which don't have anything. And
then there's the eleventy zillion places people want to go to and from
that aren't hotels and certainly don't have a driveway. Restaurants,
for example.

--
David Cantrell | Official London Perl Mongers Bad Influence

The voices said it's a good day to clean my weapons

On Mar 2, 12:40*pm, David Cantrell wrote:

And there's bound to be a few exceptions which don't have anything. *And
then there's the eleventy zillion places people want to go to and from
that aren't hotels and certainly don't have a driveway. *Restaurants,
for example.

Which people might also wish to park their car outside, but they can't
because traffic flow is more important.

If stopping and loading are not permitted, this should be for all
vehicles.

Neil

On Tue, Mar 02, 2010 at 06:13:48AM -0800, Neil Williams wrote:
On Mar 2, 12:40=A0pm, David Cantrell wrote:
And there's bound to be a few exceptions which don't have anything. And
then there's the eleventy zillion places people want to go to and from
that aren't hotels and certainly don't have a driveway. =A0Restaurants,
for example.
Which people might also wish to park their car outside, but they can't
because traffic flow is more important.
If stopping and loading are not permitted, this should be for all
vehicles.

Yeah, that's great in theory. In practice, there's a huge difference
between a large lorry stopping for 20 minutes to unload several
days worth of goods, and a cab stopping for a minute or two. Even
having several cabs do that causes far less disruption.

--
David Cantrell | top google result for "internet beard fetish club"

I think the most difficult moment that anyone could face is seeing
their domestic servants, whether maid or drivers, run away
-- Abdul Rahman Al-Sheikh, writing at
http://www.arabnews.com/?article=38558

On Mar 3, 12:16*pm, David Cantrell wrote:

Yeah, that's great in theory. *In practice, there's a huge difference
between a large lorry stopping for 20 minutes to unload several
days worth of goods, and a cab stopping for a minute or two. *Even
having several cabs do that causes far less disruption.

It can still cause a lot of disruption. And a car driver isn't
allowed to stop to drop off (though they may still do it anyway),
which takes a fraction of the time it takes to complete the
transaction and leave a taxi.

Neil