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The office
Aug. 24th, 2006 11:19 amI'm likely to be spending a lot of time in this cramped little office from now on, so I'll describe it.
By and large, all Canberra cabs are a Ford Falcon sedan, automatic, recent model. I drive one of these as the family car, bought at the ex-government auctions a few years back, though it's a little older and a little more upmarket than the average cab. Anyway, driving it should not be a problem.
Some cabs, such as Cab 168, which Mike drives, are station wagons. This means that they have a bit more room in the back and occasionally a customer will ask for one because they have bulky items or a lot of luggage to transport. Some cabs are set up to transport wheelchair-bound people and there are a few minibuses in the fleet.
But the office is much the same for all of them. To begin with, you have your standard driver's seat and controls. This is on the right-hand side of the vehicle, so for all my US and Continental readers, you'll have to make appropriate mental image adjustments.
Incidentally, the standard entertainment system has a CD player, which is more than my car has. A pity I can't set it to BBC Radio Guernsey, but I guess I'll have it on the local ABC station for background music.
Above the rear-view mirror is a security camera. This is about the size of a cigarette pack, and quite unobtrusive. It feeds into a hard disk drive hidden away elsewhere on the vehicle, and it takes photographs every so often or when certain incidents occur (such as the doors opening). There's another one mounted externally, but that must be even more unobtrusive, because I didn't spot it. The camera has a built-in LED flash system for night-time.
The most obvious item in the cab of the cab is the computer despatch system. It has a display and controls mounted behind and to the right of the steering wheel. Maybe 30 centimetres wide, 8 high and 3 deep. It has a GPS antenna on the dashboard mounted so it can see up through the windscreen. More on how this works later on, but it's a key item in how the cab operates.
Mike had his own personal GPS unit mounted to the left of the steering wheel. I'll have to get something similar, I think. It has all of Australia on a chip, down to individual streets, numbers, places of interest and so on. It can give voice instructions, and will recalculate a route if you miss a turn or ignore its advice. It's plugged into the DC power outlet and mounted on velcro. Mike has the stylus for the touch screen on the dashboard behind the steering wheel, along with his mobile phone. Incidentally, he doesn't have a hands-free kit for his phone.
There's a voice radio system with a press-to-speak microphone hanging off the dash. This only broadcasts messages for that particular cab, unless the driver has signed out, in which case you can hear messages for all cabs. This is mostly used if there are changes to a radio despatch advice (the details of which come up on the screen), or if the driver can't find the passenger.
Mike told of one incident where he picked up a passenger for which another cab had accepted a call, and the despatcher quizzed him about his passenger identity when the other cabbie complained he couldn't find his fare. They worked out Mike had picked them up because they could see (via the GPS) where he was going.
Mike hadn't known he was picking up another's fare. You can't trust passengers - they want a ride, there's a cab appeared in front of them, they assume it's their's. Or if they know it isn't, they'll still take it because they don't know when their cab will arrive.
In the footwell just under and to one side of the driver's left knee, there's a little handset and printer for accepting credit cards. It communicates with the credit card system through the mobile phone network, and occasionally can get screwed up by the GPS. Or vice versa.
There's a manual system and credit card slips kept in the glovebox, in case the computerised system is down.
Under the dash on the central console is the taxi meter itself, which has a series of buttons for selecting the tariff, starting and stopping, adding extras and so on. It is tied into the printer so the driver can produce a record of all his fares for the day.
There are various stickers showing car identit, tariff rates, code of conduct and so on, stuck on the inside of the windscreen on the passenger's side. Another area of difference for my American readers; in Australia a passenger will usually sit in the front.
Mike keeps a supply of change in the beverage holders, and where CDs are stored in the central console is where he keeps the paperwork.
There are various other thingamajigs inside the cab, but I can't remember all the details now. I'll take a few pictures and give a bit more of a guided tour later on, when I actually have one to myself, and know a bit more about it all.
It's a reasonably compact and complicated little environment. We'll see how comfortable it is. I've got fairly long legs and I can see that credit card system as a bit of a problem.
By and large, all Canberra cabs are a Ford Falcon sedan, automatic, recent model. I drive one of these as the family car, bought at the ex-government auctions a few years back, though it's a little older and a little more upmarket than the average cab. Anyway, driving it should not be a problem.
Some cabs, such as Cab 168, which Mike drives, are station wagons. This means that they have a bit more room in the back and occasionally a customer will ask for one because they have bulky items or a lot of luggage to transport. Some cabs are set up to transport wheelchair-bound people and there are a few minibuses in the fleet.
But the office is much the same for all of them. To begin with, you have your standard driver's seat and controls. This is on the right-hand side of the vehicle, so for all my US and Continental readers, you'll have to make appropriate mental image adjustments.
Incidentally, the standard entertainment system has a CD player, which is more than my car has. A pity I can't set it to BBC Radio Guernsey, but I guess I'll have it on the local ABC station for background music.
Above the rear-view mirror is a security camera. This is about the size of a cigarette pack, and quite unobtrusive. It feeds into a hard disk drive hidden away elsewhere on the vehicle, and it takes photographs every so often or when certain incidents occur (such as the doors opening). There's another one mounted externally, but that must be even more unobtrusive, because I didn't spot it. The camera has a built-in LED flash system for night-time.
The most obvious item in the cab of the cab is the computer despatch system. It has a display and controls mounted behind and to the right of the steering wheel. Maybe 30 centimetres wide, 8 high and 3 deep. It has a GPS antenna on the dashboard mounted so it can see up through the windscreen. More on how this works later on, but it's a key item in how the cab operates.
Mike had his own personal GPS unit mounted to the left of the steering wheel. I'll have to get something similar, I think. It has all of Australia on a chip, down to individual streets, numbers, places of interest and so on. It can give voice instructions, and will recalculate a route if you miss a turn or ignore its advice. It's plugged into the DC power outlet and mounted on velcro. Mike has the stylus for the touch screen on the dashboard behind the steering wheel, along with his mobile phone. Incidentally, he doesn't have a hands-free kit for his phone.
There's a voice radio system with a press-to-speak microphone hanging off the dash. This only broadcasts messages for that particular cab, unless the driver has signed out, in which case you can hear messages for all cabs. This is mostly used if there are changes to a radio despatch advice (the details of which come up on the screen), or if the driver can't find the passenger.
Mike told of one incident where he picked up a passenger for which another cab had accepted a call, and the despatcher quizzed him about his passenger identity when the other cabbie complained he couldn't find his fare. They worked out Mike had picked them up because they could see (via the GPS) where he was going.
Mike hadn't known he was picking up another's fare. You can't trust passengers - they want a ride, there's a cab appeared in front of them, they assume it's their's. Or if they know it isn't, they'll still take it because they don't know when their cab will arrive.
In the footwell just under and to one side of the driver's left knee, there's a little handset and printer for accepting credit cards. It communicates with the credit card system through the mobile phone network, and occasionally can get screwed up by the GPS. Or vice versa.
There's a manual system and credit card slips kept in the glovebox, in case the computerised system is down.
Under the dash on the central console is the taxi meter itself, which has a series of buttons for selecting the tariff, starting and stopping, adding extras and so on. It is tied into the printer so the driver can produce a record of all his fares for the day.
There are various stickers showing car identit, tariff rates, code of conduct and so on, stuck on the inside of the windscreen on the passenger's side. Another area of difference for my American readers; in Australia a passenger will usually sit in the front.
Mike keeps a supply of change in the beverage holders, and where CDs are stored in the central console is where he keeps the paperwork.
There are various other thingamajigs inside the cab, but I can't remember all the details now. I'll take a few pictures and give a bit more of a guided tour later on, when I actually have one to myself, and know a bit more about it all.
It's a reasonably compact and complicated little environment. We'll see how comfortable it is. I've got fairly long legs and I can see that credit card system as a bit of a problem.
