The Knowledge- Part 1

Having spent a fair bit of time in London taxis of late, and having had occasion to converse with the affable and smart taxi drivers at length, there were two particular conversations that stuck with me.

The first of these, and the subject of this rant, was the remarkable insight of the taxi driver on the secondary economic impacts of telecommuting and geo-arb'ing. 

The driver illustrated the point by explaining that the majority of his fares are the cliche London businessperson, going from home or local-tube-stop to the office.  Over the last three years, he had seen a precipitous drop in the number of these fares on Mondays and Fridays.  He had gone as far as query his regular customers as to this trend, and explained to me that they were 'working from home, because of the Internet', which resulted in less trips in taxis to the office.  This had materially impacted his income and those dependent upon same.

He then expanded the discussion to include those of his regular customers who had chosen to move away from London to the English countryside and now work remotely, practicing the fine art of Euro-Geo-Arbing.  They had checked-out of the very-expensive London rat-race entirely.

It would be interesting to get ahold of before/after figures of the number of telecommuters in London when they initiated the Charge. I suspect that, like bus and underground usage, the amount of working-from-home increased considerably.