Why London’s cabs are in the top rank

It might have an overhead window so passengers can rubberneck the Manhattan skyscrapers; it might have charging stations for mobiles and it might do more miles to the gallon than the current version’s paltry 12, but unless it actually has a driver that knows where it’s going then it all seems a bit pointless.

For New York taxi drivers are notorious for not only failing to have a poor command of Manhattan drawl but not knowing how to find their way through its vast concrete chasms as well.

Not like over here, where our world-renowned London cabbies are required to have the Knowledge before they can even attempt to pick up a fare-paying passenger on the capital’s streets.

Not only can they pirouette their vehicles on a sixpence – or a dime, come to that – but they have an amazing ability to find their way from A to B, knowing not just the names of streets or squares but points of interest along the way, including clubs, hospitals, hotels, theatres, embassies, government and public buildings, railway stations, police stations, courts, diplomatic buildings, places of worship, cemeteries, crematoria, parks and open spaces, sports and leisure centres, places of learning, restaurants and historic buildings.

When tested on their Knowledge, they must, without looking at a map, identify the quickest and most sensible route between any two points in London their examiner is minded to choose, and then reel off the names of the roads used, when they cross junctions, use roundabouts, make turns and what is alongside them at each point.

No wonder they have brains the size of a small planet. There is, apparently, evidence that training for the Knowledge can alter the size of the hippocampus – the area of the brain used for spatial memory and navigation – and is generally larger in taxi drivers than in the general population. Probably not those driving around New York, though...

I hasten to say that our erstwhile taxi drivers here in York might also have brains like small planets too, but I bet doing the Knowledge in our fair city would be a walk in the park compared to finding your way, by memory, from Bromley to Barnet or Romford to Richmond and naming all and sundry on the way.

But although navigating from Wigginton to Woodthorpe might seem relatively easy in comparison, and most of us drivers who live here could do it in our sleep (though not while at the wheel, obviously), how many of us could name all the streets we pass through on the way, not to mention the landmark buildings within them?

I’m sure your average experienced York cabbie could do that. At least, one would hope so.

However, where the London approach would really come into its own in our city would be if all York cabs had the 25ft-turning circle that London cabs do, because it would solve at a stroke the traffic shambles that is experienced daily at the front of the railway station.

Maybe they could even turn in Shambles too, if vehicles were ever allowed down this narrowest of the city’s thoroughfares, but that’s perhaps a musing step too far.

But stranger things have happened. The original legal requirement for London cabs to have such a small turning circle is because the size of the small roundabout at the entrance to the famous Savoy Hotel means vehicles need to be able to turn on the proverbial sixpence to navigate it.

Such is the quirkiness of this country of ours that the requirement of just one building out of the thousands in the nation’s capital – and not even a royal palace at that – meant that something like 20,000 cabs had to fall in line, just so the hotel’s guests didn’t have to walk the 100 yards or so from the nearest dropping-off point in The Strand to the hotel door. Poor things, that would never do. And the custom of a passenger sitting on the right, behind the driver, also provided a reason for traffic driving on the right on the approach to the hotel along Savoy Court, so allowing people to board and alight from the driver’s side.

This, then, is apparently the only place in Britain where vehicles can officially drive on the right hand side of the road – just one small stretch of highway where we fall in line with 72 per cent of the world’s countries.

Trust us to be different…. but there again, that’s what makes us so special, taxi drivers and all, as we so ably demonstrated at That Wedding ten days ago.

Pomp and circumstance organisers of Manhattan, or anywhere else for that matter, take note. And make sure you’ve got knowledgeable taxi drivers to ferry your visitors to and fro while you’re at it.