Taxi Driver License test

Attractions and favourite places were put to the test, as were lesser-known roads and alternative itineraries. The Knowledge " was not something the London taxi driver had been getting ready for for years, but even urban taxi riders found it frightening. Now, these issues have vanished, happy for prospective testers, perhaps not so much for those who will be driving in the backseat.

In the last few week only the geographical information is left in 10 issues concerning the navigation through the town with a chart. However, some taxi professionals see a different incentive that comes from a mounting menace to the sector. Over the past few years, on-line vehicle service such as Uber and Lyft have established themselves in New York and elsewhere, and these service do not need a hacking license, nor do their riders need to be geographically checked by the town.

Apparently, the attractiveness of taking a taxi in gold has declined. Meanwhile, the number of pilots trying to get behind the tax has decreased over the past year, according to taxi fleet operators, despite urban accounts that the number of hacker licences has stayed the same. The elimination of geographical issues, some say, could promote the recruitment of emerging taxi riders.

In fact, success quotas have risen by up to 20 per cent in recent months. Whereas Mr Fromberg described the geographical cull as a "small change", reviewers, perhaps the hardest of all, say that it will lead some behind the steering wheels riders to know less about New York than the backseat tourists who are fitted with a travel guide and a smart phone.

87-year-old Stanley Wissak, who owns and dispatches 55 Stan, a large global taxi operator based in Long Island City, Queens, said he was more concerned about a shortage of driver numbers than a shortage of geographical knowledge: "With GPS, you don't have to know where anything is anymore. "He said it has been hard to find new riders in recent month and many layers have not been manned.

A number of drivers' license examiners will also be alerted. "It' s foolish, I think, that a New York taxi driver can get his license to cut and eat without even realizing where the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building is," said Efim Vitomsky, who heads a taxi trainer at Kingsborough Community College. A J Gogia, another teacher, has cut off the busy teaching of geometry at his Queens College, A J Yellow Taxi Tutors, during which he would drill pupils in places in Manhattan and on dark roads in Queens for whole dayers.

This new test is much simpler, Mr Gogia said, because pupils can easily read the city's regulations. Fromberg described the critique as a "very unfair characterisation " and explained that the other 10 card readers' queries were a good evaluation of a driver's geographic know-how. He said the European Neighbourhood Policy Committee was devising a new education and licence programme with more focus on security, access and support.

He said train centres would be directed to instruct GPS navigators, and a revised test could involve geographical issues. "There is little likelihood that a licenced taxi driver will not know where the main touristic sights are," Fromberg said. The half of the 80 question test, 30 English competence and 10 card reader test remains the same.

Out of the other 40, up to 25 issues may have taken up geographical coverage, Mr Gogia said, while the rest concerns the regulations. Mr Fromberg saidography never told a number of the 40 multiple-choice questioning, but refused to identify the mixture because he said it was fluctuating all the time. Pupils then have to take a test which is taken on Friday morning at several schools in the town.

Whilst some new entrants said they had a fair working understanding of the city's layouts, a prospective driver who completed the test on Friday said he had found it easily despite his utter shortage of riding practice in New York city. When asked whether he could take a taxi to celebrities in Manhattan such as Penn Station, Times Square or the Grand Central Terminal, the petitioner, a recent Bangladeshi resident now in Briarwood, Queens, said, "Absolutely not.

" for fear of upsetting the taxi committee. LaGuardia Community College's Kimberly Kendall, who heads a taxi education college, said the college has discontinued geographic education and no longer provides the 80-hour course that many non-native New Yorkers have chosen, primarily to study geometry.

Commenting on the decision, Mario Chauka, 33, of Corona, Queens, who works for Lyft, said that in the 10 years he has been riding Livree automobiles in New York City, the severity of the wood hacking license test was a good excuse not to take it. "He always thought that as a taxi driver you have to be a pro, but I think I would even know more than a new driver who starts now," he said.

53-year-old Brooklyn-born Seth Goldman with 30 years of driving history in a local taxi was sceptical about letting GPS navigation take care of the driver's navigation: