Cab Books
So today we get to learn how a zone cab works! As mentioned before I drove cab for about four-and-a-half years while I was in grad school. The company I drove for was a zone cab service, which works somewhat different from a meter cab--we were allowed to take multiple passengers at once if it meant we didn't have to deviate too much from our route to take both. The passengers would get a cheaper ride since their route was likely to be less direct, and clever drivers would make more money by piling multiple calls cheaper into the same cab at once. Instead of charging passengers by distance alone, we had a map (not pictured) that had the city divided into 251 zones, and they would be charged according to their source and destination zones and how many zone lines the most direct route would cross. It was efficient, good for the environment, and massively confusing. It also had a tendency to pile crackheads and drunks and weirdos into the same cab along with more upstanding citizens, which was a big turnoff for some. Since the system could get insanely complicated for multiple calls we tended to have the most "professional" drivers of the three major companies in town--that job had the most brutal learning curve of any job I've ever worked. Since our rates were cheapest and rides were potentially shared and not necessarily direct we were usually considered the "budget" option, which also insured lots of passenger drama. The next three books on my shelf are relics of that time--my police street directory, my zone directory, and my fare calculation directory. I would always carry these three books, a zone map, my city street atlas, and the yellow pages for looking up business addresses on all my shifts. For this post I'll demonstrate how these books would be used to locate and calculate a fare (back in the days before cabbies started getting robbed of their smart phones). First of all, let's assume a call comes in from Dorchester Circle to Tomahawk Trail. Neither of these are particularly prominent streets, so the first thing a driver might do is look them up in his or her police directory. This was the same book issued to police officers to assist them in locating addresses. The cover is ripped off of mine from heavy, heavy use.
First we look up Dorchester Circle. We see that this street runs north off the 3100 block of Dorchester Way two blocks north of 6100 McKee Road. I may not know where Dorchester Circle or even Dorchester Way is, but I certainly know McKee Road, which is a major street, and I know roughly where the 6100 block would be. Presumably if I'm bidding on the call over the radio, I'm not terribly far away from it.
Next we look up Tomahawk Trail. This runs West off Merrill Springs Rd two blocks south of Lake Mendota Drive. (If I also look up Merrill Springs Road I see it runs north and south off Lake Mendota Drive in the 5100 block). Again, Lake Mendota Drive is an easy reference street for anyone who even half knows the area.
So next I calculate which zones the source and destination are in. That's where the zone directory comes in.
Dorchester Circle is in zone 170. Knowing the map from back in the day, the even zones were in the west and the odd zones in the east. Note that some streets like Dorsett Drive span multiple zones depending which block you're in.
Tomahawk Trail (not to be confused with Tomahawk Court) is also on the west side in zone 110. Note also here that some streets which are a dividing line like Tompkins Drive are in different zones according to whether the address is odd or even.
So we're going from zone 170 to zone 110. I may be able to look at the map and figure out how many zone lines that crosses, but the more precise way is to use the fare calculation directory.
I look at the page with the lower number, 110, and then find the line which lists the number of zones to the higher number, 170. This crosses 13 zone lines via the most direct route.
Finally I flip to the back cover to see the fare this corresponds to. Crossing 13 zones means I'm getting $15.75 for this ride. Now if I pick up someone else along the way who is going the same direction but only crossing five zone lines, I can pile another $7.75 in my cab for only a slight delay to my other passenger.
On a busy night (or day) our dispatchers would have dozens of these calls on the board at the same time, with up to forty drivers all competing for the same calls. The dispatchers would try their best to pile multiple calls into the same cab so calls on the outskirts wouldn't get stuck waiting for hours. It was completely insane and I have no idea how the best dispatchers were able to do it--it was confusing enough juggling three calls at once and trying to figure out the best route to take the passengers without them throwing a fit about going too far out of the way. One piece of ephemera here. Tucked in my fare directory is a partial slip for an Authorization (i.e. someone riding on some sort of voucher) for a call. I only filled out part of the slip so it probably got canceled. This was from some cold winter morning in 2005 and I would have been driving my usual cab, 192.
