The new taxi tech of a century ago — meters! —freaked out cabbies, too
GM and Lyft say self-driving cabs are coming within a year
By Tim Townsend
The Ford Model T was still 18 months from being introduced, but new technology was already reshaping how urbanites got around.
“Cab service in New York is about to be revolutionized,” was the lead in a March 4, 1907 story in the New York Times about a technology called the taxameter, “whereby the exact distance traveled and the exact amount of the fare to be paid are accurately registered on a dial attached to the motorcab.”
On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that General Motors and Lyft will begin testing self-driving electric taxis in an unnamed city within a year.
“In an effort to ease regulatory concerns, Lyft will start with autonomous cars that have drivers in the cockpit ready to intervene,” the Journal reported, “but the driver is expected to eventually be obsolete.”
The rise of shared ride service companies like Lyft and Uber have caused existential introspection among taxi companies and cabbies around the world. Now, just seven years after Uber’s founding, it seems ride sharing companies have plans to ditch the driver altogether.
More than a century ago, the threat to drivers came from a lack of trust. Before meters, a cabbie and his passenger simply negotiated a fare. The taxameter system, which was intended to protect passengers, came to New York (then Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston) after being used in Paris, London and Berlin.
“The taxameter is like an enlarged alarm clock,” the Times explained…
…similar to the fare indicator in street cars, and containing a mechanism operated by a flexible shaft connected with the wheel of the vehicle connected in the same manner as the speedometer upon a motor car. It has, within plain view of the passenger, a number of apertures on its face, in which appear figures showing the amount payable at certain times. The driver sets the apparatus in motion by means of a lever when the passenger enters the cab, and it is impossible to throw the taxameter out of gear without reversing the lever, which at the same time releases the flag indicating that the cab is available for hire.
But cabbies and their supporters weren’t happy to have a mechanical babysitter riding alongside them.
The taxameter’s “liability to error has been shown by experience, and it should be inspected as weights and measures are,” one Times writer said in 1909. “It has been observed that one’s taxicab costs more when pavements are slippery than in dry weather, because the rear wheels of the motor cars then slip more frequently.”
And, also by the way, the writer reminds us, only idiots get scammed by Manhattan cabbies.
“Cabmen cannot successfully overcharge unless the people who ride in cabs are weak enough or lazy enough to be swindled out of small sums without complaining.”
In Paris, the taxameter was considered a failure because cabbies made their money too quickly and stopped working.
In London, in March 1907 “several thousand” cabbies marched from the banks of the Thames to Hyde Park to protest the taxamaters, followed by five thousand supporters, according to the Times.
“While these cabs are considered the beginning of the greatest revolution in street conveyance here since the hansom was evolved in 1834, nevertheless it means suffering to the cabmen and their families.”
Because they could no longer rip people off.
In an obit for the London cabbie that fall, the Times wrote that an assortment of conveyances had done him in.
“When the Londoner must take a cab he prefers the auto-taxameter, which is faster and more comfortable than the ubiquitous hansom and entails no dispute over the fare at the end of the journey,” according to the Times.
Non-taxameter cabbies were reduced to doing “shilling journeys” to the nearest Tube station, or even to a “taxa” stand where a passenger could pick up a better cab.
“Shorter rides,” one cabbie told the Times, “but still we get ‘em.”
