976-CAB-TALK/I’m Into CB!

The New York Sun reports that cab drivers are resurrecting 1980s-style party lines:

It’s not just wives at home or relatives overseas that keep taxi drivers tied up on their cellular phones during work shifts. Many cabbies say that when they are chatting on duty, it’s often with their cab driver colleagues on group party lines. Taxi drivers say they use conference calls to discuss directions and find out about congested routes to avoid. They come to depend on one another as first responders, reacting faster even than police to calls from drivers in distress. Some drivers say they participate in group prayers on a party line.

“Sometimes one person recites, and a group will listen to him,” a Sikh cab driver from India, Satinder Singh, said. Mr. Singh, who lives in Queens and has been driving a taxi for five years, said that only in the past year or so, since he started using T-Mobile, has he participated in conference calls.

Aleksander Sverdlov, a Russian immigrant who has been driving a taxi for 15 years, said he has accumulated about 150 numbers in his cell phone, most of which belong to colleagues he conferences with on and off during his eight-hour shift. “I know everyone,” Mr. Sverdlov said over coffee and breakfast sandwiches in his cab at La Guardia Airport.

It is during this morning routine, waiting for the first shuttle flights to arrive from Washington and Boston, where many friendships between cabbies are forged and cell phone numbers are exchanged, Mr. Sverdlov said. Once drivers have each other’s numbers, they can use push-to-talk technology to call large groups all at once.

Mr. Sverdlov said he conferences with up to 10 cabbies at a time to discuss “traffic, what’s going on, this and that, and where do cops stay.” He estimated that every month, he logs about 20,000 talking minutes on his cell phone.

Just so you’re clear, it is still illegal for cab drivers to talk on the phone while driving.

And if Cannonball Run suddenly popped into your head, you’re not too far off the mark:

Faruq Ahmed, who is from Bangladesh, says he spends about four hours a day on a party line. “I put it on speaker, and under the clipboard, so they can’t see if I’m on the phone,” Mr. Ahmed said, explaining how he has managed to avoid receiving a summons from the Taxi & Limousine Commission. Cell phones, Mr. Ahmed said, are good for business, driver safety, and even benefit passengers because drivers learn from each other about what’s happening on the streets.

Mr. Ahmed also supplements his party line chats with conversation his CB radio. “Usually on the radio, it’s just one or two talking, and many many people listening in,” he said. Different languages are broadcast on different radio channels.

(Thank god this gave us the opportunity to revisit the 976 phenomenon or we wouldn’t have found this, for example . . . or this.)