The most common application of Taxicab Geometry comes from its name.

It alludes to the paths

taxicabs take on a grid of horizontal and vertical streets. In his book on the subject, Krause
provides a plethora of real-world problems that involve various aspects of taxicab geometry
through the characters of Alice and Bruno who reside in Ideal City (a play on the ideal
conditions needed for taxicab geometry). The first of such problems is the following:

Alice and Bruno are looking for an apartment in Ideal City. Alice works as an acrobat at
amusement park A = (-3, -1). Bruno works as a bread taster in bakery B = (3, 3). Being
ecologically aware, they walk wherever they go. They have decided their apartment should be
located so that the distance Alice has to walk to work plus the distance Bruno has to walk to
work is as small as possible. Where should they look for an apartment (p. 14)?

We first assume that the streets of Ideal City are all horizontal and vertical, and Alice and Bruno
must walk up and down these streets to get where they need to go. We can then solve this
problem by looking at the definition of taxicab distance, which is the minimum sum of lengths of
horizontal and vertical segments from one point to another. We can find this distance by using
the taxicab distance formula:

|33| |31| || |4| 1

So we know that the distance between their two jobs is 10 units. Since the two jobs are not
located horizontally or vertically from each other, two or more segments must be used to get
from one of the jobs to the other. The minimum number of segments that can be used for this is
two. There are two situations where we can find these two paths:



This creates a rectangle. Any series of horizontal and vertical segments that lies inside this
rectangle will produce the same taxicab distance of 10:



Since these different paths vary but must lie in the same rectangle, Alice and Bruno would want
to search for an apartment inside the area of this rectangle.

Unlike the rare number of teachers would implement taxicab geometry in their classes, Krause
does not restrict all of his problems to ones such as the above that only involves calculating
taxicab distance. He also incorporates conics and other areas of the geometry with his problems
about Alice and Bruno, such as the following problem:

Alice and Bruno still dont have an apartment. Their latest agreement is that neither person
should have to walk more than 4 blocks farther to work than the other person. Where can they
look (p. 29)?

Since we know that the maximum difference that the two distances can have is 4, we can find
the area that would work by finding the set of points where the common difference from the first
point, A, and the second point, B, is 4. This is the very definition of a hyperbola. Therefore, we
know that we have the following equation:

|x3| |y1||x3| |y3| 4

If we put this equation in Graphing Calculator 4.0 along with the points A and B, we obtain the
following graph:



To find where Bruno and Alice should live, they should look along this line segment. To find
similar problems involving other aspects of Taxicab Geometry, read the rest of Krauses book.
He provides a plethora of problems involving Alice, Bruno, and Ideal City.