Known before a trip exists
The Two Ends, Written as Addresses
Somebody can answer this on the day they first think about a journey, before any ticket exists. It is also the answer that most often arrives as a neighborhood rather than a place, and a neighborhood cannot be quoted.
- What the desk writes down
- Both ends in full: number, street, city and the part of the county they sit in. If one end is the field, that is written as the field and the other end carries the detail.
- Why no number can be named without it
- Distance and time of day are what an operator prices, and neither can be worked out from a district. Two addresses eight minutes apart can sit in the same ZIP code.
- What happens when it changes
- A new address is a new question to the operator. If the car is not committed the desk simply asks again; if it is, the operator decides whether the change is possible and what it does to the price.
What a district cannot answer
A request that says "somewhere near the medical district" is a request nobody can price. Not because the desk is being difficult, but because the operator on the other end is working out two things from the addresses: how long the car is committed, and what the road is likely to be doing at that hour on that stretch.
Both of those move a great deal inside a single district. This county is wide, and a run from one edge of a ZIP code to the field is not the same job as a run from the other edge.
Why the desk does not guess
It would be easy to take a district, pick a plausible point inside it and ask on that basis. That would produce a number quickly and the number would be wrong, and the person who discovers it is wrong is the traveler at the curb.
So the desk holds the request until both ends are places. The alternative is a quote that means nothing, which is worse than a slower answer.
The airport end is the simple one
When one end is the field, that end is written as the field and nothing more, because the operator knows the ground. What matters at that end is the direction the run goes and the hour, and those are separate entries in this intake.
When it changes
An address that moves before a car is committed costs nothing at all: the desk asks again and the answer comes back the same day. An address that moves after a car is committed is the operator's call, because the operator has already allocated a driver against the original job. The desk passes the change on and reports what comes back, and it does not promise the answer.
Known before a trip exists, one of three moments in the intake