After 30 years (and the arrival of Uber), a school that teaches London cab drivers 'The Knowledge' is closing down

One of the schools that teaches London Hackney cab drivers "The Knowledge" is closing down, and its owner blames Uber.

The Knowledge is the exhaustive training regimen in which taxi drivers are required to learn, by heart, every single one of London's streets.

The Knowledge has made London cabbies the best taxi drivers in the world. But they're also more expensive than Uber, which takes only a few weeks to sign up for.

The Financial Times' Emma Jacobs reports that Knowledge Point, based in Islington, is going to offer its courses online-only, supplemented with pop-up seminars when required. Malcolm Linskey, 70, told the FT:

There used to be queues to get into the room, which accommodates 40, he says. Now there are 10 to 12 rattling around. "Demand has gone down since Uber arrived. Usually we have 350 students enrolling a year, last year it was 200."

The key sentence in the FT story is this one, which describes the inefficiency with which traditional black cabs process new driver recruits:

Downstairs in Knowledge Point's sludgy green rooms, studying routes across London, is Stewart Chapman, who enrolled in 2012. He hopes to qualify as a black cab driver in six months ...

If he enrolled in 2012 and will be qualified in six more months, then he will have spent nearly four years learning to drive around London, a skill most people acquire without training. The entire process for black cab qualification can cost £1,044 in fees.

Viewed from that angle, it's not completely surprising that competitors saw a weakness they could exploit.