“Look. A spot of intellectual honesty is always a good thing.” Says London Mayor Boris Johnson, as murmurs of discontent grow in the visitor gallery. “And the reality is that you’re not just dealing with a predatory, American minicab App – though you certainly are – and I’ve said before that I don’t like their attitude, I don’t like the way they’ve set out to disrupt life in this city – but you’ve also got to face the desire of millions of people to travel more cheaply.”
It is not what the audience in the London Assembly’s meeting chamber – or at least the large contingent of badge-holding London Taxi drivers present – wish to hear. Their response is a mixture of jeers and shouts (“Liar!” “All we want is fairness!”).
Anyone who has attended (or watched via webcast) Mayor’s Question Time, the monthly session in which the London Assembly cross examine the Mayor, will know that it is not always an entirely peaceful affair. On occasion, under particularly firm questioning, the Mayor’s public image of bluster and insouciance can slip, replaced by a harsh temper and a tendency to shy away from facts. The assembly members themselves are also not above the odd piece of political grandstanding, aware that the session can be used as much as an opportunity to espouse views as it can be to question them. Nor are interruptions from the gallery (all sessions are open to the public) unheard of.
The May 2015 session was, however, far more atmospherically charged than most. For it included coverage of a topic which has become increasingly emotive – the future of London’s Black Cab trade, and the suggestion it cannot continue to survive in its current form.
“[The Current State of the Trade] is an absolutely shattering story. And it’s terrible to see people who are seeing their livelihoods disappear in front of them and feel powerless to do anything about it.”
Roger Evans, Assembly Member
An historic trade
To truly understand the current issues relating to London’s Taxi and private hire trades one must first understand the history of the former, and what differentiates it from the latter. In essence, London’s iconic Black Cabs (and the regulation and definition thereof) can be traced back to the short-lived days of Cromwell’s English Republic. It was in 1654 that Parliament passed the first law aimed at addressing the “many Inconveniences [that] do daily arise by reason of the late increase and great irregularity of Hackney Coaches and Hackney Coachmen in London, Westminster and the places thereabouts.” By 1662 a licensing system was in place, limiting the total number of cabs to roughly 300. That licensing system – albeit with considerable changes – remains in force today.
“there were doubtless moments in the glorious business of the hackney carriage trade where suddenly there was an invention. The motorcar for instance! And suddenly there was a moment where loads of grooms and ostlers and coach drivers found that they didn’t have a job. And that, of course, was incredibly traumatic and incredibly disruptive. But they came back.”
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London
The Knowledge
One of those key changes came in 1833, when the limit on the number of licensed cabs was removed. Instead, the system was changed so that it was drivers, rather than owners who were required to obtain a licence. To do so involved demonstrating that one was a “fit and proper person” – a requirement which remains in force today.
The next great change came in 1865 with the introduction of one of the most iconic elements of London’s Taxi trade – a requirement for drivers to pass “The Knowledge” in order to obtain a licence. Brought about in response to the many complaints received by visitors to the Great Exhibition, the underlying objective was to ensure that all licensed cab drivers had a reasonable knowledge of London’s layout and streets. It still serves the same objective today.
Nor has the examination process changed significantly in that time. The full process is described in some detail here but in essence the applicant is required to memorise every road within a six mile radius of the King Charles I statue at Charing Cross (the point from which all road distance to London is measured). They are also expected to memorise the locations of a wide variety of major landmarks, theatres, public services (such as police stations and hospitals) and other common places to which a passenger may require taking.
As if this wasn’t tricky enough, the applicant is then expected to memorise the contents of the infamous “Blue Book.” This lists 320 “runs” through London which it is compulsory for the applicant to know. You can find an example copy of the Blue Book here, and the complexity of this task is perhaps best summarised by quoting, in full, the instructions to candidates it contains:
- Firstly, using maps, work out the most direct route between the start and finish points.
- When you get to a start point you must first learn the area within a 1/4 mile (400m) radius of that point and make a note of the places of interest/important features you see. You need to learn the roads that join the places you find to the route. Take time and trouble to do this, it is important.
- When travelling along the route take note of any important features you see (Features are not only points of interest, but also include one-way streets, prohibited turns, etc).
- At the end of the run you must investigate the area within a ¼ mile (400m) radius of the finish point for places of interest and important features.
- Learning the area around the start and finish points of all 320 runs will ensure that you comprehensively cover the area within the six-mile radius of Charing Cross and build up a good working knowledge.
- Remember that because of one-way streets, no right turns, etc., the forward and reverse routes may be different. You will need to know both directions.
As can be intimated, passing the Knowledge is no mean feat. It is small surprise that passing it can take up to two years, nor that, as the graph below shows, the number of those successfully attaining their Green Badge each year is significantly lower than the number who attempt it. Indeed it is this barrier to entry that has not only helped cement the international reputation of the London Taxi driver, but also ensured that an upper limit on the number of licence holders or vehicles (as exists via the medallion system in cities such as New York) has never needed to be re-introduced.
The Black Cab
If it is the Knowledge that makes London’s Cabbies unique amongst the city’s drivers, then it is the strict requirements placed on their method of transport that makes them unique on its roads. Known collectively and colloquially as “Black Cabs” (whatever their colour) they are subject to heavy regulation related to turning circle, disabled access and a wide variety of other factors (including, increasingly, emissions). It is for this reason that only a limited number of vehicle types have ever been licensed for use – perhaps most iconically the Fairway (pictured at the head of this article, of which over 75,000 were made) and its visual successors as well as, more recently, vehicles based on small van designs from the likes of Nissan and Mercedes.
Unfortunately this need for highly designed vehicles comes at a hefty price – potentially £40,000 or more for a single vehicle, as well as limited options (and thus hefty prices) for parts and maintenance.
Enter the minicab
London’s Black Cabs also have one other unique attribute that is critical to understanding both the difference between them and the regular minicab trade, and also to understanding where the bulk of all current issues lie. They are the only vehicles in London allowed to have, and make use of, a taximeter.
The presence of that taximeter is required because London’s Black Cabs are the only vehicles in London permitted to “ply for hire.” That is, solicit or (the bit that often gets forgotten) wait for passengers without any pre-booking. This, then, is (and has been) the fundamental difference between the Black Cab and minicab trades as long as they have both have existed.
Minicabs can take passengers but must have been booked in advance. Conceptually speaking this disadvantage is counter-acted by the fact that, whilst they too are regulated by TfL, they are subject to far less obligations with regards to the nature of the vehicle they use and the level of knowledge of London’s streets they must have. Overall this saving in equipment and required skill level is passed on to the passenger in the form of a far cheaper journey.
Hailing a Black Cab, by contrast, will (theoretically) see the passenger pay a premium for the privilege of getting a service on demand, as well as a perceived better level of service. In most cases it also translates, for vulnerable or disabled passengers, to the security of knowing that they will be able to make their journey without prejudice or inconvenience. In part thanks to the accessibility of the vehicle and level of training and scrutiny received by its driver but also because in return for the right to ply for hire Black Cabs have, for almost two hundred years (since the Hackney Carriage Act 1831), been subject to the rule of “compellability” – if you hail a Black Cab then (with a few common sense caveats added and modified over the years) the driver must take you where you want to go, at the regulated fare.
“[T]he driver of every hackney carriage which shall not be actually hired shall be obliged and compellable to go with any person desirous of hiring such hackney carriage; and upon the hearing of any complaint against the driver of any such hackney carriage for any such refusal such driver shall be obliged to adduce evidence of having been and of being actually hired at the time of such refusal, and in case such driver shall fail to produce sufficient evidence of having been and of being so hired as aforesaid he shall forfeit [his licence]”
Hackney Carriage Act 1831
A fractious relationship
This split in the taxi market – essentially between pre-booking and ply for hire (and all the differences related to the natures of those trades) has arguably long served London’s taxi users well. That is not to say that, on the industry side, it has always seen easy relations.
Touting – the practice of illegally plying for trade by minicabs – has long been a problem. That, historically, this has not been taken sufficiently seriously by the regulator (previously the Metropolitan Police but since the turn of the century TfL) has been a frequent complaint from the Black Cab trade. In their defence, TfL have been at pains to point out that, since becoming the regulator, they have worked hard to clamp down on the practice. This is not just because of the impact it has on the Black Cab trade (and, obviously, its illegality) but because touting is often practiced by illegal minicabs.
The dangers of illegal minicabs is that rare thing on which all three elements of the industry (Black Cab, minicab and regulator) entirely agree. Illegal minicabs pose a threat not just to business but to the safety of road users and the general public who (wittingly or unwittingly) use them. Their vehicles are unlicensed for taking passengers (and thus will not have been safety checked or appropriately insured) and their drivers will not have been vetted to ensure they are not a danger to their passengers.
“It is easy to forget that what you are actually doing is getting into somebody’s car, on your own with them, and the doors are locked.”
Rachel Griffin, Suzy Lamplugh Trust
Given that a significant percentage of London’s cab journeys take place at night when women (and men) are trying to get home after the Tube has closed this is an unacceptable risk. TfL have, in recent times, run multiple hard-hitting campaigns to warn potential passengers of the danger. They have also worked closely with the industry to try and identify particular hotspots and act upon them.
TfL’s claim to have had a significant impact on touting is a fair one. Survey results of late night Londoners over the last ten years have shown a huge drop in touting. As they pointed out in a recent press release covering Operation Neon, the current enforcement exercise:
[T]he proportion of women approached by touts at the end of a night out in London has reduced by 77% since 2003. Since April 2013, the TfL funded Cab Enforcement Unit has reported 148 drivers for unlawfully plying for hire, resulting in a 97% conviction rate of those that have gone to court.
Those are numbers of which TfL can justly be proud but, as always with single number statistics (especially when they’re percentages), it is worth digging out the actual data. Most pertinently in the case of this article the raw numbers behind that drop in touting. These are illustrated in the graph below.
The graph goes some way to highlighting why, despite TfL’s genuine success in helping curb touting, the Black Cab industry itself remains frustrated. The initial impact of TfL’s more rigorous approach to enforcement was huge. By 2010, however, the “quick wins” had been made. Since then, the perceived level of night time touting has largely remained static at about 15% of respondents. This is not because TfL have stopped enforcing but simply because the type of enforcement required to make a further impact is both more complex and expensive.
As with all enforcement in the world of transport, it is rarely possible to eradicate something completely (there are some wonderful peculiarities when it comes to enforcement and effect on fare dodging on buses that are worthy of an article in themselves). That is very much the case here, and were it not for outside factors it may well be that keeping touting at that 15% level may have been enough to at least avoid significant harm to the existing industry even if it was obviously far from ideal.
Since 2010, however, technology has begun to have a significant impact on the London market – and then in 2012, Uber arrived in London.
“There’s another factor you have to bear in mind and that’s the appalling but ineluctable force of consumer preference. And there are more than a million people in this city who have the Uber app. You’re dealing with a huge, huge, economic force – which is customer choice. And the taxi trade needs to recognise that.”
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London
The benefits and problems of technology
The arrival of Uber may well have brought about the most significant disruption caused to London’s cab trade by technology, but it is not the first. It goes without saying that the arrival of the sat-nav (and their ever-increasing improvement) has significantly undermined one of the unique selling points (USPs) of the Black Cab – The Knowledge. Still, however, it is fair to argue that the labyrinthine nature of London’s streets, as well as the arcane art of finding a way through its traffic flows give the Black Cab driver the slight edge. The sat-nav did, however, put an early dent into the benefits of the Black Cab over the minicab, beginning a squeeze on the existing industry that has only gotten worse.
In corporate terms though, the honour (dubious or otherwise) of directly disrupting the market arguably belongs to a more traditional minicab firm – Addison Lee.
An example of the Addison Lee fleet
Over the last five years Addison Lee have, by primarily focusing on the presentation of both drivers and cars, set about challenging perceptions – particularly for business users – of the traditional minicab. A Black Cab experience, the theory goes, with near-minicab prices. More critically Addison Lee became (and remain) a massive investor in technology, spending over £1.5m a year on websites, apps and devices to both create a quality (and easy) experience for those looking to book taxis, and to find efficiencies in driver control and routing.
The Black Cab industry’s reaction to the increasing pressure placed on their market by Addison Lee was understandably not a happy one. Nonetheless, as long as the firm has stayed within the bounds of its licence as a minicab firm it has largely been free to operate as it sees fit. That is not to say that there haven’t been issues. Accusations of behaviour bordering on touting, of unsuitable drivers and driver behaviour, predatory behaviour and a host of other infractions were voiced by representatives of the Black Cab trade almost from the point where the firm’s real impact on the industry began to be felt.
The Bus Lane War
For many this perhaps represented the first point at which relations between the industry and TfL, as regulator, began to deteriorate – with the perception from the Black Cab trade being that TfL were failing to respond quickly, or seriously enough to potential issues with Addison Lee. TfL, for their part, were always keen to stress that as long as the firm stayed within the bounds of their licence there was nothing they could, or should, do.
Indeed it is perhaps significant (and relevant to the Uber situation) that it was arguably the actions of Addison Lee themselves which ultimately woke TfL’s near-sleeping regulatory giant, rather than the Black Cab industry itself.
In 2012, Addison Lee Chairman John Griffin effectively declared the company’s own private war on an organisation that was also London’s bus operator by telling his minicab drivers to drive in bus lanes. This was a privilege previously reserved for Black Cabs and something that minicabs were emphatically not allowed to do. Griffin felt this was unfair, and – very publicly – told TfL he wasn’t having any of it – his cabs would go where they liked.
The resulting conflict was one which, in hindsight, Addison Lee had little hope of winning. TfL flexed their muscle as minicab regulator, then Addison Lee attempted to fight back in court – both in the UK and, when that failed, in the European Courts. In short, there they argued that banning minicabs from bus lanes, but not Black Cabs, represented an act of “State Aid” on the part of TfL. TfL argued that because Black Cabs needed to ply for hire they, by necessity, needed access to the kerb at all times.
Significantly, Addison Lee then brought an App into their argument – Hailo, which had been designed to help Black Cab drivers find nearby fares (and vice-versa). Addison Lee claimed that 60% of all cabs now had access to the App, which meant that ply for hire was on the way out. TfL fought back with survey numbers, which highlighted that 52% of all Black Cab journeys still began with the passenger hailing the cab.
In the end, the case was decided not by technology but by that oldest of clauses from way back in 1831 – “compellability.” The European Court ruled that because a Black Cab was obliged to pick up passengers, percentages didn’t matter. It wasn’t that TfL were aiding Black Cabs, they were simply exempting them from otherwise reasonable restrictions by reason of necessity – the necessity to ensure that the Black Cab could get to the kerb and pick up a passenger to whom they had a requirement to respond in a way that was both safe and reasonable (particularly for those who were mobility-impaired).
The case obviously did not signal the end of Addison Lee, nor of their conflict with the industry. The firm remain a major player in the London market, and one of the factors contributing to the squeeze on the traditional trade. But to a certain extent it represented a very public clipping of their wings. Pertinent, however, is that – in the eyes of some – it was the potential impact on TfL’s bus operations that ultimately tipped company and regulator into conflict, not the problems facing the Black Cab trade.
As many of the comments made at the recent MQT (Mayor’s Question Time) made clear, for those supporting the Black Cab trade there is a distinct fear that the same situation exists again now in the face of what has become an even greater threat – Uber.
“You need to show that you mean business as a regulator! You can’t keep letting them get away with it! There are all these issues! A driver without insurance is a very serious issue indeed and there are many other cases – people who aren’t licensed by TfL working in this city! Carrying our people around! It is an absolute danger! What are you doing Mr Mayor?! It is on your watch! What are you doing to look at this licence and suspend or revoke it?!”
Caroline Pidgeon, London Assembly Member
From the perspective of the potential passenger, Uber’s model is incredibly simple – so simple, in fact, that it can be summed up effectively in one line on their website: “Your Ride. On Demand. Transportation in minutes.”
Behind the scenes, Uber’s operations are naturally more complex. The advice TfL received on the legality of its operating model is here and provides a surprisingly good, detailed, explanation of how it operates.
Broadly speaking the principle is that Uber is, essentially two companies.
The first Uber London Ltd (ULL), is based in the city and essentially employs all Uber drivers. It is this firm that is licensed as the operator, and which employs licensed minicab drivers. The firm is also responsible for all promotion of Uber, as a service, within London, and for equipping drivers with the GPS and Smartphone equipment which they all must use (and which ensures that their last known location is logged frequently). ULL are also responsible, via those devices, for dispatch and booking. In effect they provide all the functions of a regular minicab firm. The only thing that they don’t do is calculate fares or charge money.
The second firm is Uber BV (UBV), based in the Netherlands. This company is responsible for the actual Uber App that potential passengers use. When a customer wants to be picked up the App queries the location data available via a link to ULL’s cloud-based servers and reports back to the customer. The customer then picks the vehicle they want, which is dispatched automatically, via another request to ULL to the customer’s location.
What’s crucial is that it is that all elements of fare calculation are carried out, on the fly, in the cloud by UBV and communicated to the passenger and driver via their respective Apps. No cash changes hands within the vehicle itself as payment is also taken by UBV and not by ULL.
The purpose of this curious, but deliberate, arrangement and distribution of activities is simple. It allows Uber to essentially act as if there is a taximeter in the vehicle and offer a ply for hire model, but in a way that – as TfL’s legal advice shows – seems on the surface not to break any specific rules on how minicabs should operate. This is because the current definition of a taximeter is a device that is physically attached to the vehicle and which utilises that connection to calculate the fare (either via time or distance travelled). Uber does all of this in the cloud.
This is a critical problem for the Black Cab industry. Uber are able to provide the same quick-response service (indeed for the modern, connected citizen perhaps even a better one) at a far lower price than Black Cabs can offer. If sat-navs removed the USP of the Knowledge, then Uber have also found a way to remove that of the right to ply for hire, without any of the concurrent obligations.
TfL have requested a ruling from the High Court to confirm that Uber’s methods do not equate to a taximeter in all but name, but as is clear from both their own comments on the matter and those of the Mayor, they are clearly not hopeful of a ruling any other way.
What’s more, if the comments of the Mayor are any guide, they seem resigned to the fact that even a successful ruling would only represent a stay. As a heavy user of cutting edge technology themselves, TfL seem to have accepted that if required Uber would find a way to rapidly iterate their way out of the digital problem.
“I don’t think that even if we get a judgement saying that Uber is illegal. that is, that the device is a taximeter and that the Uber model is breaking the law. I’m afraid that Uber will simply come back and change the model, change the offer and you’ll have a situation in which the taximeter is simply being held in the hands of the passenger! There’ll be an endless series of technical innovations. That is my anxiety.”
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London
It is this seeming acceptance of a technological fait accompli that is clearly contributing significantly to the anger and frustration within the Black Cab industry and its supporters. It is symptomatic, perhaps, of a disconnect between how the industry sees its regulator and how that regulator sees itself. Squeezed now by both the minicab trade and Uber, the Black Cab industry sees preservation, not just regulation, as a crucial part of TfL’s role. From their perspective this is a belief that they increasingly don’t see shared.
Indeed one particular exchange at Mayor’s Question Time perhaps highlighted this more than anything else.
“They are not just pushing the boundaries of the licence they are breaking it!” Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon commented, having highlighted several possible licensing infractions by Uber – such as virtual ranking, whereby Uber drivers lurk at Airport drop-off points in order to be ready to pick up fares, “And you need to take some action Mr Mayor!”
“You could suspend Uber’s licence or revoke Uber’s licence today.” The Mayor replied, with resignation, “They’d go to a magistrate and be back on the roads tomorrow! It would make no difference whatsoever.”
“You need to show that you mean business as a regulator!” Pidgeon continued, with audible anger. “You can’t keep letting them get away with it! There are all these issues! A driver without insurance is a very serious issue indeed and there are many other cases – people who aren’t licensed by TfL working in this city! Carrying our people around! It is an absolute danger! What are you doing Mr Mayor?! It is on your watch! What are you doing to look at this licence and suspend or revoke it?!”
“We don’t think there are currently sufficient grounds to revoke the licence.” The Mayor replied. “That’s the advice I’ve been given. And I’m further assured that if we did it, they would quickly seek to overturn that revocation in the courts overnight.”
“They must just be laughing at you Mr Mayor because you haven’t got the guts to enforce the legislation!” An exasperated and frustrated Pidgeon continued. “Enforce the legislation! Like you do with every other minicab firm! Like you do with every other Black Taxi driver! Enforce the legislation! Then so what?! Tfl should stand up to them!”
Looking for solutions
It is unfair, of course, to say that TfL are unaware of the threat to the status quo that Uber represent, or are entirely immune to the issues that Black Cab drivers face.
Indeed those looking for the same kind of bus lane moment that happened with Addison Lee may have, in fact, now seen it – and it may well be the risk of congestion (along with pollution, an increasingly hot-button topic for TfL).
As the Mayor was keen to point out, beyond the direct impact on the Black Cab industry, the growth of Addison Lee, Uber and the minicab industry in general has begun to have a serious impact on the number of cars on London’s streets. Shortly after the General Election the Mayor’s office released a press note which pledged to seek new powers to regulate pedicab and minicab traffic on London streets. The pedicab pledge is ultimately nothing new (the same pledge was made back in 2012). What was new was the call to be able to limit the number of licences issued to minicab drivers and operators.
The growth of private hire vehicle drivers in the last 18 months (from December 2013 to date) is approximately 18%. The Mayor is concerned that this unprecedented rise in numbers is causing increased congestion, particularly in central London, as well as more pollution and problems of illegal parking.
It’s a startling increase but again, it is worth unpacking some actual numbers.
As the graph above shows, whilst Black Cab numbers have remained practically static, minicab driver numbers have been on a general, consistent, rise for some time – ultimately culminating in what was indeed a serious spike last year. Whether that spike is an outlier or not remains to be seen, but ultimately that may not really matter. It is clearly enough to cause concern to TfL.
That concern, and their initial response to it, were laid out in more detail by the Mayor at the beginning of the MQT taxi session. The Mayor indicated that a number of options were now under consideration. Firstly, there would be the aforementioned quest for powers over quantity licensing (although it should be noted that this did not, as he had intimated it would, make it into the Queen’s Speech). Beyond this, a number of other options are being considered – including a requirement for licence-holders to speak English, to pass a basic geography test without recourse to sat-nav and for complaints about minicab behaviour to go directly to TfL rather than via their operator.
The response from the Assembly, and indeed from the assembled Black Cab drivers, to this announcement was lukewarm at best.
“The core disease is caused by a toxic mix of a predatory business approach by this company Uber and a desperate lack of enforcement against bad practices like touting. The pacificity by TfL and yourself in tackling this challenge to this industry is basically causing the total decline. We are in danger of completely losing the historic Black taxi industry in this city.”
Val Shawcross, Assembly Member
On the surface, this may seem surprising. But it lies in the fact that the London Assembly has already issued its own report into the current state of the taxi industry – back in December last yar. Entitled Future Proof. It contains 19 recommendations, which essentially boil down to a need for a long-term strategy for the development of both the private hire and taxi industries. Most of the things that TfL have mentioned were already recommended there, and it was clear that there was a feeling, justified or not, that once again the regulator was lagging behind. Ultimately, Future Proof advocates a strategy that should see enforcement stepped up, greater regulation over the minicab trade, greater requirements expected of drivers and cars, increased investment in taxi ranks and other street measures aimed at alleviating the pressure on the hard-pressed Black Cab trade. All measures aimed at ensuring that at least if the minicab industry is to stay the same, that the current black areas of touting, virtual ranking and similar can be removed and that business unlocked to the Black Cab trade.
Some of these things clearly overlap with the Mayor’s announced plans. Others, as TfL’s response to the initial Future Proof report shows are things that they entirely agree with and which in some cases are already under way.
What’s clear, though, is that a fear remains that TfL will not take these measures as seriously, or indeed as quickly, as the industry feels it needs. That and, again, the thorny subject of Uber – something that the Assembly (and their report) make no bones about admitting remains an issue that needs to be addressed.
No easy conclusions
Ultimately, as this article (and the length of it) demonstrates, the current debate is one that lacks easy answers. Indeed even if the various issues facing the Black Cab trade are addressed then that still leaves one big decision left to make – what is to be done about Uber?
For even if all other issues are potentially addressed, there remains a distinct possibility that the App (and its effects) alone may be enough to significantly damage, if not unalterably change, the Black Cab trade forever.
When it comes to that issue, currently at least, there seem to be two sides to the debate. On one side stands the Black Cab industry, genuinely fearful for its future. On the other, TfL as regulator, reluctantly accepting that its hands are tied, and a Mayor whose claims to simply be reluctantly following their advice perhaps don’t represent the full picture – which in truth naturally includes his own belief in the power of the free market.
“They’re undercutting the rest of us”
“Yes they are! It’s called the free market!”
An angry exchange between the gallery and the Mayor
A decision for Londoners
At the end of the day London, and its representatives, now face some harsh choices. It is not a case of deciding which side of the debate is right or wrong (they both are), but simply whether London’s Black Cab industry is genuinely worth saving. That this is such a difficult question to answer is due to the fact that, as the quotes littered throughout this article from both sides of the debate have hopefully shown, the answer largely depends on an individual’s point of view.
From a pure market perspective the Mayor is correct as, from a current regulatory one, are TfL. In terms of pure numbers and cold, hard logic, services such as Uber now offer far better value to Londoners looking to get themselves from A to B and as long as Uber stick to the letter of the law they can continue to do so. That their operational model, and the way they break into markets, is far from friendly to both their own drivers and their rivals is not a secret, nor has it stopped an enormous amount of users from deciding to use their services.
The counter argument, however, is that it is not about the letter of the law but the spirit. That it is not just about money but about preserving a 300 year old industry that not only provides a reasonable living standard for over 20,000 people but whose very existence is part of the intangible fabric of London. It is an argument that in many ways borders on the metaphysical, but it is also not one without merit or precedent.
In the 1970s and 1980s London Underground became somewhat infamous for their declarations that their job was to run a transport network, not a museum. That attitude would prove to be a near-disaster for the living history of the Underground, with many of the most visible elements of its history simply swept away. That we know of the original iconic tile patterns and features that could be found in many of Leslie Green’s iconic stations is largely thanks to the efforts of volunteers who frantically sought to document them ahead of the arrival of the renovation teams that swept them all away. Similarly, it is almost entirely thanks to the foresightedness of design firm Banks & Miles (and the creative efforts of the then-young typographer Eiichi Kono) that the iconic London Underground typeface wasn’t discarded by London Underground in favour of a more generic typeface such as Helvetica.
At the time, in both cases, London Underground’s logic was sound, but a similar scale of change would not even be countenanced by TfL now, as the organisation is fully aware of the role the Underground’s heritage and iconography plays in building a positive perception of the network as a whole – both to Londoners and the ever-important tourist trade. That contribution may be difficult to quantify, but that it exists is not disputed. There is a reasonable argument to say that the Black Cab trade has a similar effect.
This, then, is London’s choice. To accept that the world of private hire is changing, or make a concerted effort to keep the Black Cab industry going, even though doing so may prevent Londoners from reaping the full benefits that technology can bring to the cab business.
Whatever path the city takes, it must decide quickly.
As always, discussion on LR is positively encouraged. As the article acknowledges, however, this can be an emotive subject. Please keep your comments to discussion of the facts and civil. Comments that are too subjective without adding to the discussion (e.g. “I used a Black Cab once…” “An Uber didn’t turn up once…”), will likely be removed.
Is it worth bringing up the potential of “beyond uber”- the very visible next move in technology that makes the driver entirely surplus? Uber were working with Google on this, but as I understand that relationship has ended with Uber now working on their own driverless car whilst Google set that work on a hail and pay app of their own- and others are working on similar technology. It’s certainly something the Black Cab drivers are and should be scared of.
A fascinating account not just on the transport issues but on the very way technology forces society to make difficult decisions. It also poses fundamental questions such as whether we need Black Cabs at all, as you have mentioned, and to which vehicles exactly should we allocate precious road space – or should we have a free-for-all?
If you think this is bad, what happens when we start having autonomous vehicles? Whilst many may think that is impractical, the slow average speed in central London means they could be limited to 10mph and still may be able to form a viable alternative to taxis and mini-cabs.
One niggle: if you hail a Black Cab then … the driver must take you where you want to go, at the regulated fare.
That is not quite true as has been discussed before. The first line of that clause states:
Every hackney carriage which shall be found standing in any street or place, . . .
So clearly a cab is under no obligation whatsoever to stop if hailed. It gets a bit more problematic once it has stopped. Presumably the taxi is then “found standing” and the compellability rules apply.
I’m an occasional user of minicabs in London and a very rare black cab user.
I prefer the minicab because it offers price certainty for a given journey. I would like minimum standards for cars and drivers (particularly language skills) and I would be prepared to accept the higher prices that that would generate.
I’ve been very pleased with Kabbee (an app which essentially offers competitive bidding between cab firms for my journey) but have little interest in Uber.
I live in the leafy suburbs and I will rarely see a black cab for hire round here. There isn’t, in my view, a “one London” solution. As one end of the journey moves beyond zone 2 the role of the black cab diminishes.
Cab journey aggregation, where two or more independent travellers share the cost of a journey in a similar direction is an interesting feature that technology can offer and could bring cab journeys to a price closer to other public transport options thus growing the market.
@John Bull – Thank you for a very informative and – as ever -lucid account of the issues. I hope comments will not descend into moral abuse and techno-babble from either side to the debate.
One issue that seems to have been overlooked so far is the fact that smart phones are still far from being universal -something that may persist for some time yet. Another – a question, really -is how Uber works at busy hire locations such as London termini: how do you and your prospective driver know, amongst the many milling punters and Ubercabs, whether you are destined for each other?
Accusations of behaviour bordering on touting, of unsuitable drivers and driver behaviour, predatory behaviour and ….
RE Addison Lee – yes, well.
From limited personal observation, whether from the pavement, on the saddle of my bicycle, or behind the wheel of the Great Green Beast … of their driving “standards”, I would certainly never consider using an A-L machine as a customer.
But, of course, that is not a statistically significant measure, is it?
Where are the minicabs ( & those using UBER) plying their trade?
I suspect they are much commoner away from the main haunts of the Black Cabs – i.e. in the outer suburbs.
Is there any serious evidence, either way, covering this distribution?
Al__S
Yes, well – but driverless is at least, what 3 years off, even as a trial.
Though, if successful, I suspect it will sweep all before it by 2025 – 10 years from now.
I live in EC4. What I see are many corporates using the ‘minicab’ system for their clients. The vehicles are often a Mercedes S Class or the like, left parked with their engine running to take very wealthy client from one place to another – not you typical minicab. It would be interesting to know what percentage of minicab client are corporate, but my feeling is it is quite high. In many terms the Black Cabs’ founding customer has moved on and they are left with the tourist market.
In my mind (and please correct me if I am wrong) TfL made a major mistake when they allowed minicab licence holders to have a discount (exemption?) on the Congestion Charge. Had this not happened the avalanche might not have started so quickly. I also observe minicab drivers using the exemption for their own transport.
Surely the crux of the issue is the requirement for black cab drivers to do the knowledge. It takes time and money; is it still required? Shouldn’t Black Cabs be put on a level playing field on this one. Where Black Cabs can differs in the vehicle design (and investment) and that should be reflected in allowing them to use bus lanes and pick up on the street.
There may one easy solution to this. Make the minicabs subject to the same emission standards as Black Cabs from 2018 (zero emissions inside Congestion Charge Zone). I doubt Addision Lee could find a suitable vehicle unless they bought LTC or other type. I also think NOT making minicabs subject to the same rules is not offering the improvement in air quality needed.
There are lots of ways to play this and different combinations. Let’s see if Boris and his team have the will or intelligence to come up with a workable solution?
[LTC is the London Taxi Corporation Ltd (trading as The London Taxi Company; formerly Manganese Bronze Holdings plc). LBM]
@Greg – As a counter-anecdote, Addison Lee has been my go-to taxi firm for years now and I’ve never had a problem with their driving (from inside the vehicle). I still remember when they introduced the text message that gave you the cab’s license number before it turned up – that was a neat idea way back when.
Times they are a changing. If there are to be black cabs as a special London feature (don’t forget that they exist in many other UK cities too- if only as a restriction on the type of vehicle that a licensed taxi driver can use), then the whole USP for both taxis and minicabs needs to be reviewed. It would be grossly unfair on those with limited mobility if the only vehicles for hire that could carry them were the most expensive ones. A small way of levelling the playing field would be to require both taxis and minicabs to be disabled accessible and adhere to emissions requirements. If that requires legislation then the Mayor/Member for Uxbridge should get on with the lobbying.
The knowledge is obviously an out of date concept. The requirement needs to be changed to then availability of an approved and always functional sat-nav system plus a basic knowledge of London’s geography. The natty stuff about one-way streets and traffic conditions is something that individual taxi/minicab firms need to market as their special feature to attract customers.
To summarise: (1) Hackney carriages need to adapt to cope with the current market, possibly involving a relaxation of the ‘knowledge’ requirement (2) regulation needs to be enhanced to enforce a minimum level of accessibility, emissions compliance and driver competence for all vehicles making themselves available for hire.
Pedantry alert: there’s a place in the text where you use ‘kerb’ instead of ‘curb’. Very appropriate in the context, but not the correct word!
Historically speaking, I believe that London’s Watermen first established many of the features that now apply to Hackney Carriages (and what happened to them!).
Fandroid re curb/kerb
My fault. John Bull sometimes defaults to American spelling due to his time over there and I spotted this so decided to change every occurrence of ‘curb’ to ‘kerb’. I really should have known better than to just methodically do this. Now corrected.
It is worth noting that the statutory definition of ‘taximeter’ does not, of itself, require a physical connection to the vehicle. The relevant legislation is s11 of the Public Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998:
The issue identified in the TfL legal advice is Whether or not [Uber] PHVs are ‘equipped’ with a taximeter. It is reasonable to infer that the real issue is not whether the Uber app satisfies the statutory definition of the taximeter – it pretty obviously does – but whether Uber vehicles are ‘equipped’ with that taximeter – TfL taking the view that a physical connection is required for the prohibition in s11(1) to apply.
For myself, I struggle to see how in enacting s11 Parliament could rationally have intended to distinguish between a taximeter physically attached to the vehicle, and one carried in the vehicle without any necessary physical connection to it.
The more interesting questions may turn out to be those of EU law. The state aid issues raised unsuccessfully by Addison Lee in the bus lanes case have not gone away; and the answer there (that taxis need physical proximity to the kerb that minicabs do not) will not apply here. Thus even if Uber loses on the s11 issue it may well not lose its present business model.
@lawyerboy. If a smartphone capable of running the uber app constitutes a taximeter, and if a vehicle can be said to be “equipped” with anything carried in it, then anyone who rides in an ordinary (non-uber) minicab carrying such a smartphone would be causing that vehicle to turn into an unlicenced taxi. That cannot have been parliament’s intention either.
As a non-taxi-user I feel the need to point out that the *real* problem with Addison Lee claiming the right for private hire cars to use bus lanes was that it would have made bus lanes totally unenforceable and useless, as every wide boy or libertarian petrolhead in London would have added a fake blue roundel to the back of their car and claimed to be a minicab.
Let’s take Malcolm’s approach and reduce the argument to absurdity.
Suppose General Motors, Toyota etc. create a car which has an intelligent metering function in it where you can specify a value for mileage and the trip counter gives you not only the mileage but the cost. Suppose also this is an added feature which is not widely known about. Now imagine a private hire company purchasing a fleet of these vehicles without knowing about their full functionality. Also the drivers are unaware of the feature. Is any offence committed by these vehicles picking up passengers?
Supposing the driver is now aware of the feature. Is it now an offence? Suppose, just for personal interest, he uses it but does not charge the fare on that basis but multiplies the trip count distance by the mileage cost using a calculator. Is that an offence? Suppose one day his calculator doesn’t work so he takes the value from the trip counter – which always corresponds to the value determined by his calculator. Are we really saying that he has crossed the line and is now committing an offence?
More importantly what on earth is the point of not allowing any PHV other than a taxi from fitting a meter? The only logical reason I can think of is the weights and measures issue of calibration but I would imagine that trip counters can be pretty accurate these days and in any case mini-cabs have relied on these for years without issue.
To my mind this is all a bonkers argument and the whole thing really needs to be rethought from first principles. Technology has moved on so fast and so quickly that a few sticking plasters won’t fix this.
PoP asks “what on earth is the point of not allowing any PHV other than a taxi from fitting a meter?”
The point is market segmentation. If you want to charge different customers different rates, you have to have distinguishing features, even if they are utterly illogical ones.
To drift to trains (as we do…), if I have an Advance ticket for a particular train, and I am early enough for the one before, and it is nearly empty, what is the point of the company not letting me ride on it?
PoP also says “a few sticking plasters won’t fix this”.
On the particular matter of the taximeter, I think it has fixed itself. As TfL is not enforcing the taximeter rule strictly, the rule may as well not be there, and it can just sit there rusting away.
But that rule never was a key part of the distinction between black cabs and other private hire vehicles. The key part is the “plying for hire”. That distinction still does exist, and as the article makes clear, “we” will have to decide if it is to remain, and be properly enforced, or disappear. That is where the hard choice has to be made.
Even without smartphones and apps, the use of ordinary mobiles and the controllers’ adoption of more advanced planning and CRM tools has transformed the taxi market. Know a good large company for an area and outside the very busiest times they’ll often be able to send a car to your current position within minutes. They’ll text you when the car is assigned, on the way, arrived outside your location, they’ll even know your home address automatically from your number and a disembodied voice will offer to send a car there automatically ASAP if you ‘press 1’ or ‘press 2 to speak to a controller’. Except in some major central streets and ranks that is usually far more convenient and dependable than walking from your leafy residential road to the nearest arterial in the hope of hailing in the rain. That tends to make the system lopsided. Black cabs make a lot of sense for unbooked central and centre to suburb journeys, but not from the suburb back to the centre or to another suburb. Perhaps the hackney carriages need to find ways to pick up more phone and app booked journeys on the fly when in the suburbs.
Where to guv?
A good article that has certainly filled in some of my knowledge gaps about taxis. I’m afraid I align myself with the “taxi trade must adapt or die” line of argument. To coin a trite phrase “you can’t buck the market” and if people are voting with their mobiles and wallets for a cheaper option then the protected part of the market needs to change its offer, reduce its fares, take on more new technology etc. Being even harsher still I don’t use black cabs or minicabs so there’s a selfish bit of me that really doesn’t care if they all died out tomorrow as I think they are all a cause of needless congestion and pollution. I know many people find them convenient and useful but they’re simply unaffordable for me. I also tend to agree with the argument that TfL and the legislators will really struggle to frame legislation and controls that can cope with the pace and scope of technological development. Government is often “flat footed” in these instances but that is simply a fact of life rather than a criticism. If it tried to act quickly and be too clever we may well end up in a worse place than we started from with unexpected consequences.
On the same theme of rapid technological change Sir Brian Souter recently made a presentation to the annual conference of municipal UK bus companies. He interestingly singled out “geeks” as a threat to the bus industry. By that he meant the clever chaps who invent technology and business models like Uber which then come along and undermine long established ways of doing things. He cites the experience of tumbling taxi fares in San Francisco and Uber’s dominance there as something that could start to destroy parts of the bus industry where “taxi” fares could equal or undercut bus fares and thus eat away at bus networks. Of course in many towns and cities the bus industry has already ceded evening, night and Sunday services to the taxi trade so the threat is established. I doubt London’s bus network is in imminent danger but if, for some reason, the burgeoning private hire / minicab businesses were pushed on to the rampage for evening, night and Sunday travel in London then we might see problems over bus revenues and costs emerge. Sir Brian also mentions how Stagecoach now handle technology for services like Megabus.
The article about the conference speech is at.
http://www.route-one.net/industry/album-conference-sir-brians-big-idea/
It’s worth a read if only to make you pause and think a bit. I know some people dislike Mr Souter and his views but I think he has a fine strategic and entrepreneurial brain in his head and is worth listening to if only to challenge your own stance on things.
Slightly confused non-Londoner here.
If I understand the article and comments right, there’s a distrinction between, effectively, “cabs that you can hail in the street but can’t summon to your location” and “cabs that you can summon but can’t hail”. And (modulo some quibbles about the precise meaning of “equipped”) the summonable kind of taxi is not allowed to use a taximeter?
How, then, is the fare for the taximeter-less kind supposed to be decided? By haggling with the summoned driver once he arrives?
Does having a strict distinction between summonable and hailable vehicles promote an efficient use of resources? As Mark Townsend noted obove, summonable vehicles are more convenient for journeys from the periphery to the center, whereas hailing can be better for going in the other direction. Price differences aside, one would expect that to lead to a lot of vehicle kilometers going to waste by hailable cabs running empty towards the center and summonable cabs running empty in the other direction. (Or at least, given that the outbound and inbound peaks probably don’t happen at the same time, a waste of vehicle resources because the two flows are served by separate fleets).
@Henning Makholm, 29 May 2015 at 01:48
That unbalanced working, heavy on the empty dead-heading in one direction is fairly common in traditional taxi operations. The worst example I recall in my personal experience (six months weekly commuting in mid-1990s) was Glasgow airport where, unlike the Heathrow arrangement, Glasgow city drivers had no pick up rights whatsoever for the rank at the airport which was reserved for Paisley registered Hackneys who equally could not pick up in the city. Thus, every city centre to airport journey and vice versa without fail always generated an empty journey in the other direction. Completely indefensible from fuel use, pollution, congestion perspectives, and the wastage involved must have been reflected in the fares charged.
Excellent article. I’ve been trying to get my head around the Uber “is it a meter” argument – I’ve learned a lot here.
One item that was touched on in this article – but not explored in depth – is emissions. Most of the black cab fleet are emissions dinosaurs. Because the engine tech is so out of date, they also guzzle fuel. Although tfl talk of moving to zero emissions for the black cab fleet, I don’t see any real “Chargers on the rank” progress to make this a reality. Indeed, Nissan (who spent millions adapting their taxi vehicle for London) have walked away in disgust and dropped their attempt to break into the London black cab market. The Nissan cab showroom on the Isle of Dogs is now a showroom for (yet another) apartment block.
Sat nav has made The Knowledge in its current form irrelevant: it needs to be scaled back to reflect the fact that a taxi driver no longer needs to have memorised the A-Z. Perhaps an examination that tests for a basic understanding of London’s arterial road network and comprehensive knowledge of places of interest would be more suitable?
A stepping down from degree level to A/S level could be one way of thinking of it.
I feel this is one of the main reasons why the debate is so emotive for the black cab drivers: the barrier for entry for their profession is so very high, it takes so much time and money for them to attain that it represents a substantial personal investment on their part – and that makes having a rational debate on the matter all the more difficult.
A few important points not raised in this article.The Mayor uses the term ‘free market’,when it couldn’t be any less of one.
A black cab driver is told what vehicle he must drive,this is a wheelchair accessible vehicle,at a cost of £40,000,which is also not remotely fuel efficient.He is then told how much he must charge,through the regulated meter.
Uber drivers are driving a car,which costs significantly less than half the price of a black cab,fuel costs at around 60% less.
They are then being allowed to operate in the same market as a black cab,the ‘on demand’ market,at a lower price.Level playing field?
Uber are no different to any other mini cab firm other than being able to do what any other mini cab are refused by law to do which is ply for hire! They are no specialist and there drivers have no better knowledge than any other mini cab firm, people ask me why are they so popular and there’s one answer they are breaking the legislation and TFL are creating a free for all Wild West style monster app! It’s not a genius bussiness model it’s a app that’s breaking the laws! TFL say embrace technology but they have failed to control it! The meter issue is a red herring for me it’s the plying and as stated in the laws PRE BOOKED should mean pre booked! Uber have even said they only provide a on demand service! Tell me as honest look into this if you think that London taxi drivers are getting cheated! But they are cheaper is the answer to every uber user and that’s fair enough and I can totally understand that! But they would not be cheaper if they had to abide by the rules of any other mini cab firm and would go bust tomorrow ! So please just see the London taxi drivers issues and don’t view it as a moan because of competition!
We need a sea change in the way the streets of London are organised. I believe there is a place for zero emissions black cabs, with a sharing capacity, and a cap on numbers. What has happened to maaxiapp?
Any taxi needs to up its game to contribute to cleaning London’s air, reducing road casualties and running an efficient route in terms of space, to cut congestion. If Black cabs find a way of doing this, their expertise, knowledge and skill would be highly valued.
I want to ban private cars in London’s congestion zone and build a network of protected cycling lanes/roads but there will still be room for a taxi that is safe, clean, kind and respectful.
[Websites espousing causes are not allowed on LR, as we are not a platform for others’ causes. LBM]
Other threats:
Even without Uber (which is probably the biggest threat) there are 2 TfL projects that will dent the Black Cab trade in the next few years (both hitting lucrative fares):
1. Night tube – passengers are much more likely to use a night bus or minicab when they get off the tube (Black cabs might have to come south of the river where there aren’t many tubes either to get some more business 😉 )
2. Crossrail to Heathrow in 2019 – My attempts at back of the envelope calculation suggest black cab journeys to/from Heathrow (and to a much small extent to/ from Paddington) represent a low single digit % of cabs on the road at any point, with to/from Heathrow being potential very lucrative (Not all journey are equal when you look carefully at the pricing model and a double ended Heathrow is a jackpot).
Re PoP,
1. My current Teutonic motor is very close to being able to do this it would only need the price I paid at the pump inputting to give a very accurate journey cost (driving with the realtime MPGometer on is very educational but heading off topic)
2. Google maps gives you and estimated journey cost by car based on distance and real time traffic info (from the speed of other google maps navigation feature users), if you were just to take the fare as multiplier of this estimated cost as the agreed minicab fare before the journey starts it drives a coach and horses through any attempt to ban uber.
3. So any minicab with the phone with google maps using it as an alternative to sat nav then has a taxi meter?!?
4. Uber could come up with many more business models (based on 2. etc) that bypass any rules devised.
5. The only simple way I can see that TfL has to curb Uber is to cap the number of mini-cab drivers (a large number Uber driver appear to be part time so only drive at peak demand times and the surge type pricing model accentuates this.)
6. I suspect a lot of the growth in minicab drivers is through part time drivers who are supplementing other income streams* I suspect if you look at the number of hours worked by minicab drivers many of the newer ones would be working comparatively few hours. (This effect was well documented in Dublin after the economy imploded and with lots more drivers and the existing full time drivers got hit very hard. Shortly afterwards Transport for Ireland (based on TfL as a template) was created and soon created a national taxi licensing scheme so all cabs have a taximeter and no boundaries to avoid the Glasgow Airport Syndrome mentioned above. TfI also has a excellent all modes national journey planner including private coach operators).
*Anecdote /case study alert I know one minicab driver who just drives a small minibus belonging to the minicab firm Friday and Saturday evening/nights.
As much as like black cabs I find myself in the “taxi trade must adapt or die” category like a few others. (I think BoJo’s Groomsmen comment particularly apt)
@Mark. Boris uses the term ‘free market’ to mean just what he wants it to mean; he is a politician. What we actually have is two markets, both quite tightly regulated, but with different rules. The friction comes because there is a big overlap in customers.
@Ant. Pre-booked: here is another argument about terms. If you use an app to summon a minicab, that is no different from a phone call to an office. But the uber model comes so close to hailing because of the typically very short delay. Pre-booked means booked in advance (and not by direct arrangement between driver and customer), but as far as I know the law does not specify any minimum delay. So the distinction between hailing and booking dwindles to nothing. Tricky.
@Graham H – when a punter requests an Uber car, the Uber smartphone app provides the registration and description of the car and a photo and name of the driver. The app also provides a GPS track of the car location on a map so it is possible to see when the car is approaching. I think the driver just gets the name and GPS location of the punter.
It isn’t foolproof but it has worked well on the few occasions I have used it (which was to request an Uber “van” to transport more people and luggage than would fit in a single black cab)
I think Uber can be viewed as part of an overall trend including services like Airbnb, peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunding that are providing alternative ways for consumers and service providers to do business.
Just to pick up a few points on the article… my “clubbing” days are now almost over but in the past I remember that it was virtually impossible to find a black cab in the early hours of the morning outside of the main nightlife areas of the West End. I don’t blame cabbies for wanting to stay in their bed at that time and some punters would not have been great passengers, but it isn’t a surprise that touts took advantage of customer demand that wasn’t being met by black cabs.
The article mentions the “green badge” black cabs who have sat The Knowledge, but there are also “yellow badge” black cabs with drivers who don’t need to pass The Knowledge and who are only permitted to pick up within certain designated areas. I don’t know the respective numbers of each type.
One point on the main article:
The only competition to LTC at the moment is Mercedes, with Nissan having walked away because the TfL/PCO kept changing the future emissions rules (Nissan’s version of things).
Anon 20.16: 28/05/15
Yes, well, a change or “tightening” of some of the regulations is going to be necessary – especially the “Fit & proper person” type of rule, maybe.
As well as the traditional Black-Cabs themselves (if you see what I mean) must also adapt – problem / baby / bathwater comes to mind, however.
As others have mentioned, the disabilty-access of “BC’s” is vital.
Maybe a limit on the total number of minicabs allowed to ply theor trade, or emissions &/or CC limitations applying would all help.
As Fandroid says:
A small way of levelling the playing field would be to require both taxis and minicabs to be disabled accessible and adhere to emissions requirements.
Yes, that might do it.
WW
Re Souter as something that could start to destroy parts of the bus industry
Well, he and all his friends & the tories in the 80’s have already done that, haven’t they?
Especially in rural areas.
The hypocrisy.
Rosalind Redhead
I want to ban private cars in London’s congestion zone and build a network of protected cycling lanes/roads but there will still be room for a taxi that is safe, clean, kind and respectful.
Do you now?
And if my wife hurts herself in the office or street ( but doesn’t need hospital) how do I get her home? [ Yes, that has happened. ] Or my car (just) qualifies as a “bus” because it has 10 seats? [ Yes, it does, actually. ] Or you LIVE inside that zone?
[Snip of old complaint. Malcolm]
IIRC several cities have banned Uber, outright inside their jurisdictions, mainly on the “fit & proper persons” basis.
Can anyone tell me if this is correct, or am I repeating urban myth?
This is not simply a London problem
Both mini cabs and black cabs have their place. A few suggestions
1) All vehicles are licenced (black or mini) have a tracker installed. Logged and centrally monitored by the licensing authority. This could help to monitor illegal behaviour.
2) mini cab drivers should have greater checks – that driver is also actually the licence holder
3) black cabs generally are “better” in core areas of cities. Improving the quality of ranks will help.
4) if 1) is adopted charge mini cabs a pollution charge for time spent in central core (congestion zone or wider for London). Could scale this depending on emissions. – also helps air quality. Don’t want to significantly adversely affect those travelling to from central core to suburbs
5) accessability – make it at condition of mini cab fleets to have a certain % of their fleet access friendly.
Ultimately their is a balance to be stuck between price and service. In the suburbs please don’t kill the mini cab.
@Greg Tingey – I don’t think you will find a single reason why Uber has been banned or restricted in the locations where this has occurred. It will come down to the minutiae of the local regulations for the city, region or country.
In some cases (Portland, Oregon, for example) I think the “ban” is temporary while the city updates its regulations to address issues perceived with how the Uber way of doing things fits with current regulations.
I think the night tube will have (potentially) a much bigger impact on Black Cabs than anything else.
It’s a bit personal anecdote, but by and large the reason myself and many of my friends ever take a taxi in London is because it’s too late to get the tube. Sure, there’ll be parts of London not covered by Night Tube, but they’ll be supplemented with Night Buses. Certainly my main barrier to use of Night Buses is that the network is a little sparse* and it can take a while to get where I want to go (and access to a map of the network is hard to come by), which is where Black Cabs fill the gap. Everyone knows where the tube goes (and will have ready access to lots of maps) and that will have a notable dent in the taxi market.
I’d also suggest that “The Knowledge” is still relevant. If considerably less about geography and more about traffic patterns, short cuts and dealing with bad/vague directions. I like the ability not to have to supply my taxi driver with an address or postcode for where I want to go. That is a huge convenience that is not addressed by either Uber or minicabs. It can also be a cost saving when you live somewhere that’s a 2 min walk from somewhere else, but a 5 – 10 min taxi ride, due to one way systems etc. So “Take me to the petrol station on X Street” can save you £5 – 10 at night, where “Take me to SE1 2XX” might not.
*Although it’s gotten better, which has resulted in an increase in my usage of Night Buses
Other taxi licensing authorities (ie outside of London) allow (in some cases require) minicabs to have a meter, but don’t allow them to be hired on the street, or to use taxiranks. Allowing minicabs to use a meter if they choose would not change the fundamentals of the relationship between minicab and Black Cab.
Tactically, the clever solution would be to take large sections of central London’s roads and restrict them to taxis and buses only. If the minicabs can’t get to where you are, then it doesn’t really matter what technology they’ve got.
Obviously, this would also remove private cars and delivery vehicles too; allowing them to use back streets but not the main ones would allow for deliveries to go to the backs of shops, which is where they mostly go anyway – and for private cars driving into the few (mostly office) car parks in the area, but would make minicab journeys so circuitous compared to Black Cabs that it would retain a real advantage for the Black Cab.
It would also make a major contribution to air quality; buses and Black Cabs can have their emissions regulated down enough so that Oxford Street could have breathable air again.
@Reynolds 953 -thanks for the explanation. (Still unclear how this is supposed to work where there are many people milling about all looking for their specific cab – is mine the fifth one in the queue or the tenth at Waterloo? partivularly as I suspect that Uber vehicles don’t have their numbers painted in large type legible from a distance).
@ngh-standing back from the rhetoric for a moment, I wonder if LTDA and Uber aren’t fighting yesterday’s war. The next battleground, after, “plying”, and picking up WW’s comments, may well be “separate fare”,which is the present boundary between stage carriage and taxi/hire car. The technology is almost with us that would permit efficient groupage for car- sharing on a city-wide scale. No doubt, there are social constraints on this and it could have a dire effect on congestion (especially combined with driverless technology) but it may well happen if markets are left to themselves. (And Souter is right, this will have a disastrous effect on conventional modes – I recommend a visit to Johannesburg to see the effect of unregulated minibuses providing a lo-tech version of Uber on what was once a highly-developed bus network).
Re Graham H
Groupage – several apps/services have recently launched and have started advertising on social media. I suspect groupage many come with Uber 2.0 as even they are forced to adapt.
@ngh -life imitates art so quickly…
If you want a fine example of how these work in practice, rather than in theory, go to Mexico City where the uniformly green, VW Beetles have the route they are working painted on them.
Did you know that you can get (I say get, not fit) 12 people into a VW Beetle? (Some limbs are not actually within the vehicle)
My take-away from this article is that London Cab drivers should lobby frantically for more bus lanes. Many more bus lanes! So perhaps this could be great for London public transport…
But what about us elderly (and disabled) folk without smart-phones?
Thank you John Bull for a lucid and measured assessment.
There is a broader road traffic issue in London, indeed in any city region, that this article encircles – vehicle ownership and use to enable travel around London and to neighbouring principal origins and destinations (eg Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, where coaches also do nicely). For the private citizen, unless their business offers a company car, it will be options of cars, two-wheelers (powered and pedal), coaches, buses, light rail/rail/tube, and some form of taxi or other private hire.
That is a large palette of choices for an increasingly 24/7 city – ‘horses for courses’ may be the mot juste. There are locations such as Canary Wharf which these days set out to discourage private car use in the first instance. Overall there is the potential of reduced personal car ownership and personal car use within London, for which the ply for hire and pre-booked vehicle options are just two alternatives among others – eg car clubs, vehicle rentals by the hour or day – which may themselves increase in supply. In airline parlance, having a cabbie or chauffeur is a ‘wet lease’, or if you want to drive the vehicle yourself, that’s a ‘dry lease’.
The LR article does not address how the gross vehicles miles within different zones of London by different types of vehicles have mutated over time, just a statement on ‘wet lease’ driver numbers and a judgment that many drivers in the private hire sector are part-time only.
The underlying distinction that the taxi trade seems to desire above all is one of a revenue structure which protects them from undercutting and loss of income for full-time professionals. For them, the professional element has been emphasised by continuing requirement of The Knowledge, and the corresponding investment in time to achieve that, plus taxicab regulations.
Overall these rules amount to a high-cost vehicle and driver supply market for taxis, yet there is the problem (for vehicle use of any paid-for sort) that the generalised cost of public transport has been held down through adoption of click-in click-out Oyster/PAYG, and rail/tube capacity expansion. The logical impact is to put pressure on the cost of alternatives to match the public transport option, where they are competitors. Night Bus and Night Tube will add to this pressure.
When the then Transport Minister, Steve Norris, took decisions on vehicle and operator licensing regulations back in the 1980s, the preferred legal position was of retaining quality licensing but removing quantity licensing. This was applied to a number of aspects of transport. Surely this is still broadly the case?
The problem facing the Mayor is therefore first reviewing the type and effectiveness of quality licensing – both for the taxi trade and for private hire – and second whether there is now an exceptional London case to support re-introduction of quantity licensing. I don’t believe you could make quantity licensing stick, in the context of taxi or private hire being a vital ingredient for alternatives to private car use.
The solution – if there is one (there may be more, or none!) – is therefore to help the taxi trade to adjust its own supply-side structure – eg vehicle specification, scale of Knowledge required – and (possibly) to allow Oyster to be used positively in association with validated ‘wet lease’ operations of specific benefit to London’s mobility. Of course to avoid state aid it might need to be applied in appropriate circumstances to private hire vehicles not just taxis – but a differentiator in circumstances might be valid.
Overall I would expect the passenger demand to continue to be there for taxis, in terms of London’s population and jobs growth.
@ Eric T
Not just those without Smartphones but those without CASH
Buses no longer accept cash, even at Heathrow which is crazy and I have witnessed the consequences. But I am sure that taxi drivers will always accept cash
Re locating “your” Uber vehicle, I can’t speak for Uber, but when I use the taxi company’s app to book a cab to pick me up at MK Central station (where perhaps a more than a dozen minicabs meet the busier trains), I get told the make, model, colour and registration number of “my” vehicle.
@JR _ I’m not so sure it is a matter of easing quality regulation to cut costs. Do that and you blur the distinction between taxis and Ubers, which logically undermines the point of the exercise. If this thread has taught me anything so far, it is that the boundaries between these initially distinct modes is beginning to blur ineluctably (Boris – for all his much vaunted Classical tendencies – should note that “Uneluctably” isn’t a word)and struggling to maintain that distinction is probably doomed to failure. A better approach would perhaps be to rethink the purposes and nature of regulation completely.
Great article. Thanks!
I always assumed that the ‘great leap forward’ of apps or websites like Uber was to solve the basic trust issues involved in Hackney carriages. When you hail a black cab, you don’t know anything much about the driver except their badge number and they know nothing about you. Neither of you knows the exact fare to the destination and their may be ambiguity about the exact destination. As a consequence, both sides of the transaction can be underhand: cabbies could take the long way round, punters regularly bail without paying. There are few consequences on either side. The website or app can remove this information asymmetry problem by acting as an honest broker in the middle, having a certain level of checking on who both parties are, where they are going, cost, etc. Crucially, payment is 99% guaranteed by using a registered debit or credit card. The smartphone app improves on previous models by allowing a GPS fix on the customer. All of this drives down costs and reduces barriers to entry. To me, this is too great an advantage to to go away, and the industry must accept it.
TfL need to hold Uber to account just as any other minicab operator, but this clearly isn’t easy. Someone I know was knocked down by an illegal minicab 15 years ago and, despite the court case etc, the firm is still operating. So one case of an uninsured cab isn’t enough for the Mayor to close down Uber. As my friend showed, if the driver is not insured you can actually sue the minicab firm for damages instead (the guilty driver having fled the country). I am more concerned about reports of an Uber driver who had not had a Disclosure and Barring Service check: this is similar to the checks done on bouncers and was introduced by TfL after an epidemic of attacks on passengers by minicab drivers early in the last decade.
For me, the obvious way to make a distinction between the black cab and pre-booked trade is to ensure that minicabs are not cruising the streets waiting for their next pick-up. In key locations such as Soho, minicabs with no active booking would have to return to one of a number of designated locations to wait for their next booking. Part of a multi story that was closed for the night would do. This would ensure that licensed minicabs weren’t touting or adding to pollution levels by roaming the streets. Maybe the mayor could legislate to get the data from Uber as to what their cars where doing to allow monitoring of the situation?
Uber is not that cheap! In my opinion it can be very an aggresive system (with price peaks and drivers cancelling jobs).
It is worth saving the cab industry on two grounds:
1 – less an uber become a monopoly
2 – the distinctive site of the black cab
In my opinion Black Cabs should be given some tax breaks to help them lower the costs of entry. The knowledge should also be made easier.
Uber is no panecea x
The public need to be aware of who should regulate the fares of what is considered a public service. Should a local authority who consults numerous groups etc before allowing a rise in taxi fares or should a corporate regulate such fares?
Hackney Carriages have evolved over 350 years of trial and error to get to the point where they are now.
If the corporate run mini cab system kills of its competitors will the fares remain as “low” as they are now?
Low fares are a result of exploitation and are being propped up via tax credits. What a wonderful business to own where the tax payer contributes to your employees salary!
Come on people, see this for what it really is.
@ Steve – there is plenty of business activity that is underpinned by workers who are so badly paid they can claim working tax credits. It’s hardly exclusive to minicabs. It’s wrong but we’ve created a situation where employers have far too much power and there is no stomach for industrial action to improve pay and conditions. Therefore to stop people living on starvation wages the taxpayer’s taken up the slack. It’s really the economics of the mad house but that’s what we’ve lumbered ourselves with.
The problem remains that a significant slice of the market for personal travel is happy to use an Uber style system. They don’t worry that their choice today may be creating a problem for tomorrow. People don’t think about it. Again that applies all over the place. Do people who shop in Aldi or Lidl worry about Tesco or Sainsbury employees who’ll lose their jobs because of shifts in supermarket market share? Of course not – they want to spend as little as possible on their grocery bill.
I can see little justification for maintaining a “protected” black cab trade when the public are deciding that they want to spend their money on a different form of service. The black cab trade needs to work out its own survival package rather than shouting at the regulator and saying “you must save us”. If the “survival package” needs political and regulatory help to change the rules to lower costs etc then by all means ask for that. My reading of it is that TfL simply can’t stop the development of Uber or similar services especially as the people behind the concept have undoubtedly worked through a whole range of scenarios and have got plans to cope with all of them. Making appeals to the public to carry on paying for a form of monopoly service when there are cheaper, more convenient alternatives won’t work. People aren’t that altruistic.
@Greg – Sorry but I don’t agree Mr Souter has destroyed the rural bus market. In many instances Stagecoach have developed and grown services that run in rural areas and they run decent enough services in many shire county towns. It is far too simplistic to say that deregulation destroyed an industry when that same industry was in long term decline due to external factors like television, income growth, cheaper cars and petrol, land use policies etc. The National Bus Company was not able to arrest the decline despite Market Analysis Projects (MAP) to rationalise networks to reduce cost while preserving as much ridership as possible. Similarly none of the PTEs were able to do it either (barring South Yorkshire and Tyne and Wear) and decline has accelerated since deregulation and shows no sign of changing. PTE areas repeatedly show poorer results than elsewhere in the UK (from UK Government stats).
We are still having the same debate today about deregulation vs regulation and no one knows what the answer is. I can see the pros and cons of both policy positions but I also see politicians who both want “to run the buses” and “have nothing to do with them”. I am not sure which variant is worse but what is clear is that neither group are professional bus people and it’s them who know how to run buses. Ultimately it boils down to money and as there are no real political consequences for UK politicians from letting bus services rot (unlike doing the same to the railways or allowing petrol prices to rise) then they’ll continue to rot.
London’s contracted model is extremely expensive to run compared to elsewhere but we can get away it because it’s the capital. We can also get away with it because many of the external forces listed earlier work differently in London than elsewhere – car use is difficult and expensive, parking is often expensive, car commuting is far from ideal in many parts of the capital, we have a vibrant 24 hour economy with variable work patterns which sustains demand in the early mornings, evenings and on Sundays. There are also a lot of cultural activities and visitors that also create transport demand because people must travel to enjoy them. We also have relatively dense patterns of housing which also supports an intensive patterns of bus service and we are continuing to increase density in new developments.
I appreciate that’s a bit of a swerve off topic but I felt an answer was needed.
@Steve – much as I value black cabs, not having a smartphone, I really don’t think the appeal to 350 years of history is relevant. No doubt, ostlers and chairmen said exactly the same thing a century ago. The issues seem to be:
– what is the public interest here:
(a) supply – how easy is it for any of Uber’s competitors to enter the market, for example
(b) price – how is a monopoly to be prevented, and
(c) quality – what checks are needed to ensure safety
– what is the best way of regulating or securing that interest.
None of the possible answers to any of these questions need lead to preserving the black cab situation as it now exists. This is most unfortunate for those who have invested in the Knowledge and their vehicle but it is not easy to see how or why cabbies should be specifically protected against change when so many of the rest of us (eg coal miners, printers, grocers, telephone operators, to mention but a few) have had to face this problem in the course of our working lives. You could make a case perhaps for some sort of transitional help – but that implies we know now what the transition is from and to.
{Note as WW does, that that public interest has nothing to do with the wages paid – if it does, then it needs to be seen and dealt with as part of any national initiative on wages).
@Greg
There have been a few reports in North America of Uber drivers sexually assaulting passengers. Nor do I like the fact that Uber drivers aren’t really screened or regulated at all, aka a “fit & proper person” type of rule. I’d rather spend a few more quid on a mini-cab and deal with a professional.
It could come to the point where technology completely disrupts the Black Cab sector, possibly leaving them only as expensive tourist icons, like the gondolas in Venice.
It’s worth noting that whilst the Met don’t licence the cab trade any more, the touting enforcement is almost solely run by the Met under the auspices of the command-previously-known-as-Safer-Transport, albeit that the direction is set by TFL on the basis that they give the Met a bucket load of money for the privilege of having the command tackle their above-ground network challenges.
It could come to the point that technology completely disrupts the Black Cab industry, possibly leaving them as expensive tourist icons like the gondolas in Venice.
Elsewhere in the world, one regulator was shut down within 48 hours (by Uber lobbying). [Accusation of criminal activity snipped. LondonReconnections is not the place for that. Yellow Card. LBM]. http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/14/7390395/uber-lobbying-steamroller
Anonymous,
If you are going to make such comments you really must provide some sort of evidence. There is no point in making unsubstantiated comments like that. For those who have actually followed the saga in great detail it would equally seem fairly obvious that TfL have, unusually, been a bit impotent and really don’t know what to do next. To some extent one can have some sympathy but there is a limit to how long you can keep up the line that you need clarity from the courts.
In the short term I get the impression that TfL and the Mayor are just reacting to events. I don’t think either would be swayed by lobbyists unless they could present a good case. What seems to be lacking from TfL and the Mayor is some long term proposals to get out of this mess.
[Class struggle argument snipped as does not pertain to this website. We at LondonReconnections really strive for informed and factual debate, as well as comments that add to the discussion. LBM]
What this discussion suggests to me is that we need to be clear about what value black cabs provide and then ask how best to preserve the value, rather than attempting (or deliberately not attempting) to preserve a specific business model. For me, these include:
Knowledge (but not necessarily the knowledge)
Knowledge does still have value over and above GPS, at least in central London. That effect might not last for ever, since there is no intrinsic reason why computer guidance shouldn’t match the quality of the knowledge, but I am in doubt that it still exists now. That’s not the same as saying that the knowledge needs to be preserved in all its current glory, but the valuable bit is not the broad understanding of the main roads and the direction to head if you want to get from Wapping to Kilburn (which GPS can easily do), but the minutiae of how to manage the route in the most efficient way possible (which it can’t).
There was a brilliant essay late last year (in the New York Times of all unlikely places) on the sheer graft involved in passing the knowledge. It’s a fascinating read in its own right, but indirectly it shows very clearly why people who have survived the experience to become black cab drivers care about it so deeply.
Trust
JamesGB said
My assumption is precisely the opposite: the great leap forward of hackney carriages is to solve the trust issues involved in driving off with strangers. The licensing system makes vehicles and drivers as close to interchangeable as is humanly possible. The trust problem is solved because I can put my trust in the system and therefore don’t need to assess trustworthiness separately for every vehicle and every driver. That’s not the only way of doing it of course – Addison Lee attempt to solve that problem through branding and control – but it is a very effective one. Uber’s business model (and the business model of the myriad of firms whose business cards come through my letterbox) relies in part on their not doing that to anything like the same degree
Accessibility
Not just the obvious advantage of having a large fleet of wheelchair accessible vehicles, but being distinctive, spacious and easy to get in and out of (and yes I know that being accessible at a price which is unaffordable isn’t being actually very accessible).
Pride
And we shouldn’t lose sight of something intangible. Cab drivers are proud of being cab drivers in a way which minicab drivers tend not to be proud of being minicab drivers. That’s not just nice for them (which the rest of us shouldn’t feel the need to subsidise), but it translates into better service and better reputation – or, as John Bull puts it, their being “part of the intangible fabric of London”.
Value and price
All of those things, I would argue, have some value and I think it is a legitimate public policy goal to want to preserve them. The challenge with all of them, of course, is that that is not value at any price and that it is very hard for a regulated service to respond quickly to rapid change in its external environment. So the answer has to be a balance, and that’s why the question is hard.
[Link to New York Times removed as you need to log in to read it but if anyone really wants it then it is http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/london-taxi-test-knowledge/ PoP]
@marek – I just said that… We (the public, the politicians) have not defined the public interest in all this, though if I were a regulator, I wouldn’t put much value on pride. Personally,I have almost always found the jarveys helpful and even entertaining,although there are occasions when I think the passenger might usefully be able to display a notice “Thank you for not talking”.
@John – rhetoric, rhetoric. This forum isn’t about the class war (or at least not so far).
Pardon my ignorance, but isn’t the point of being equipped with a taximeter that you can charge for the journey that was made rather than the one planned. I.e. the difference between a mini-cab and a hackney carriage is that the former charges the same irrespective of route and the latter charges for the journey made. Not having used Uber I’m not sure which better describes its operation.
@PoP – your site, so entirely your call, but I didn’t log in to the NYT to get that article (and have just tried it both on another browser and using private browsing in case there was some strange cookie letting me through, which also both worked fine)
[If one of the other moderators can get it to work maybe they will reinstate it. PoP]
Blackcabs always seem to have another route option ,whereas when in private hire you come across an accident there is never an alternative route .In no way does the gps replicate a blackcab drivers knowledge.But as we all know its price price price.
I certainly think the ‘virtual ranking’ and general congestion/road space issues need to be addressed more explicitly. Minicab drivers (whether Uber-equipped or not) seem to have a pretty shrewd idea of where their next fares are likely to originate: such as at a major local hospital. What this means out here in Zone 2 is that all the surrounding streets are jammed with ever-increasing numbers of ‘waiting’ minicabs. OK, they’re not ‘plying for hire’ (and very few actually leave their engines running), so they’re not damaging the environment in that respect. Yet if their presence means that you or those delivering or supplying services to you cannot reach your property, the ‘free market’ in ‘cheap’ mini-cabs is effectively being cross-subsidized by a deterioration in the ease of access for local residents/businesses, other road users and in greater risks for pedestrians too (given the rise in double- and Paris-style right-up-to-the-junction parking). Yes, the counterpart to this is that when our children head off home after a visit, they barely have time to put their coats on before a conveniently-placed Uber vehicle announces itself as being right outside, but I suspect that somebody, somewhere lost out from the presence of the un-hired minicab blocking his driveway or sitting on a ‘residents’ or ‘deliveries only’ bay. In addition to trying to control the growth in their numbers, is it too outlandish to suggest that minicabs be compelled to pay a greater share of the costs of enhanced parking enforcement in zones where pick-ups are most frequent? This at least might help to level the playing field for Black Cabs, though since parking control these days is neither the responsibility of the Met or of TfL, I’m not optimistic of there being a ‘joined up’ solution out there.
Belsize Parker,
Just to be clear. Parking control IS the responsibility of the Met if a traffic offence is committed e.g. obstruction, parking on zig-zag lines etc. If it is “merely” a parking violation e.g. parking in a bay reserved for others, not parking within box, parking on yellow lines then, yes, that is down to the local council.
Does the Uber model involve tipping? As someone who dislikes tipping in all its forms, I avoid black cabs and minicabs in the same way that I avoid other ‘services’ where tipping is implied as part of the transaction.
Regulation loosens either because (a) it was found to be unnecessarily tight after all, or, (b) it is flouted so much that it can no longer be policed.
Which way is this pendulum swinging?
Thank you, Graham. My comment was primarily intended to address the comparison in terms of at-the-point affordability for users, where there’s no doubt to me that taxis are vulnerable. However you make an interesting and important point on regulation.
I didn’t think that discussion of varying the quality elements of supplying taxis at the point of demand should change the regulatory ply for hire distinctiveness, which I believe is at the heart of the taxi case, however marginal that turns out to be these days (perhaps only a few minutes in some cases). Mobile phones are able to summon others’ services. Instant service can still add value at the immediate point of demand, which is a pricing benefit to the operator.
Paradoxically, quality regulation of a severe nature can become quantity regulation by affecting the flexibility and costs of supply. So is TfL really ending up regulating the volume of instantly-available vehicles which occupy London’s road space, if John Bull’s taxi driver volume graph is to be believed, permanently stuck at 22,000?!
Does scarcity of supply really hurt the individual cab-owner and driver who has gone through The Knowledge and bought a specific vehicle and become one of the 22,000, or it is more of a constraint on the economics of taxi fleet owners, who may have not-entirely-identical interests alongside owner-drivers.
More broadly, easing the supply-side costs of regulation does NOT mean that quality regulation should be weakened in general. The problem is that present definitions of quality regulation appear increasingly irrelevant. Maybe I didn’t discuss that adequately. I do think that quality in a redefined form ought to be useful and indeed essential.
SatNav would suggest that the current quality standards are less relevant, as one example. Technology has already moved that on. And why does safe transit of London streets rely on historic vehicle specifications? Perhaps however the turning circle might still be relevant to address operability, as a function of immediate ability to offer the shortest journey even if it is 180 degrees in the other direction from the side of the road where one hailed the vehicle.
However, rethinking the nature and purposes of regulation could be a cross-UK issue, unless you think that London and other city regions could maintain a distinctiveness? And would that be acceptable, if you sought to hire a vehicle to travel from one regulatory area to another, and potentially ran foul of local regulations?
Your question leads to – what distinctiveness in new regulatory terms could there possibly be between a taxi and an Uber or the next app which comes along, once you seek to redefine the nature of the regulatory boundary, and if you accept that some apps are already changing quality priorities?
You’ll be aware from your own experience that regulations generally intervene in terms of standards, capacity and pricing:
• Standards (incl safety/environmental/financial):
o Owning company/trading operator/managers
o Drivers/other qualified personnel
o Operating centres/depots/parking or stabling zones
o Vehicles
o Financial competence, ability to cover liabilities.
• Capacity rules:
o Service/volume offered (eg type/location/period of week)
o Relevant design features
o Monitoring and response to user objectives and priorities
o Impact on infrastructure supply specification and volume.
• Pricing regulation:
o Validity as stand-alone or as part of charging networks
o Inter-availability, eg commercial relationship with other products/operators
o Compliance with competition policy rules.
What is the distinctiveness between taxis and private hire, for much of this? A quality standard for one could often be judged as a valid quality standard for the other. The ultimate distinction is simply that a taxi driver can or must pick up someone on streets where they are allowed to do that, when personally hailed at any time. What is the essential quality difference in that, compared to a non-taxi vehicle and driver, given that these day a mobile phone can summon a service within a few minutes?
Marek has suggested some tenets, but I’m honestly not sure that many of those can be encapsulated in enforceable legislation. Belsize Parker’s comment about the Royal Free’s lurking vehicles basically says that people have sussed there’s a market to serve! Should that be discouraged, or managed constructively in order to be useful, or nothing done about it?
To conclude with a question… What other regulations than ply for hire do commentators consider could be applied validly – and enforced beyond the next generation of apps – if regulation were reviewed from scratch?
Surprised that no-one has mentioned cycling as a threat to Black Cabs, both in its cycle hire guise and more generally. Point-to-point, cheap, quicker than walking, reliable journey time, relatively easy to park, and the new “actually half-decent” superhighways that might lead to a reduction in the bravery threshold for cycling in central London.
For me, a ride in a taxi/minicab would be a distress purchase. When other “normal” transport options do not suit (because I’ve broken my leg / it’s the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere / I’ve just picked up a flat-pack from IKEA / etc etc).
I would ideally like the choice of a phone call or a smartphone app or noticing a distinctive vehicle and hailing it or getting it from a rank. I would like any of these arrangements to provide a reliable, trustworthy, knowledgeable, safe, friendly driver with a reliable eco-friendly vehicle, and a fair and predictable price. I would like competition to be in there somewhere keeping prices down, but not obtruding nor forcing me to be restricted to only part of the pool of potential vehicles.
Am I asking too much?
@Jonathan Roberts – to suggest some partial answers to your regulatory challenge:
– Safety and quality seem uncontroversial and it’s difficult to see the case for not extending regulation to the drivers and vehicles involved in any sort of hiring (without having to get bogged down in the “what” of hiring versus plying.
– congestion and the use of bus lanes – not reallya matter for industry regulators but certainly for the traffic authorities
– pricing -hmm. Just maybe the alternatives of taximeter and (I assume this will be possible soon, if not so already) apps telling you how much your fare will be in advance will cover some of the issues and provide a platform for price control.
– Breaking monopolies (sc what to do about Uber’s market dominance). As I understand it,Uber comprises two or perhaps three separable elements: a fleet, an allocation system, and a back office billing system. A fairly standard regulatory approach would be to enable open access to at least the latter two of these (if not split them off forcibly from Uber) , and to encourage new third parties to provide alternative systems -ideal sectors for the likes of Google or Amazon, one might think.
– quantity -maybe an output from the other regulatory constraints
– plying for hire. Personally, I cherish this,as you do, but I wonder how enforcable it will be and how any “marginal” infractions are to be challenged or,indeed, proved. [In fact, I suspect that in some cases, the booked Uber vehicle would arrive before a black cab turned up].
Wow John Bull! Three major and well researched articles within a month! Well done you.
WW
Thanks for that.
Agree that the Bus “market” is not an easy discussion.
LBM
Thanks, also – that “fit & proper person” rule is vutal IMHO – one that Uber don’t seem to be following.
Maybe that is an possible answer for regulation to apply?
@PoP Just to be clear. Parking control IS the responsibility of the Met if a traffic offence is committed e.g. obstruction, parking on zig-zag lines etc.
Parking on zig-zag lines can be treated as a criminal matter by the police, but I do not believe this is very common – it almost exclusively appears to be dealt with as a civil parking contravention by TfL or boroughs. This may change as CCTV can no longer be used to issue a PCN for this contravention, but like motorists stopping in ASLs I suspect that neither of London’s forces have the resources to do so. Police forces in London tend to send out camera-generated NOIPs only for those moving traffic offences where civil enforcement cannot be used, e.g. speeding and running red lights. If a taxi/minicab driver commits a box junction contravention, drives in a bus lane when prohibited, makes a prohibited turn, etc. the likely result will be a £65 civil PCN for the registered keeper rather than a criminal NOIP and points for the driver.
It would possibly improve the perception of minicabs from a road safety perspective if there were a simple mechanism for a driver to lose a private hire driver licence if there were an excessive number of civil moving traffic contraventions (perhaps more than 4/year?). The problem with this is that as the PCN is linked to the vehicle through its keeper rather than the driver, there would need to be a means to compel the holder of the private hire vehicle or operator’s licence to disclose the driver’s identity.
Have things changed?
I remember a traffic warden telling me once (about 20 years ago) that he couldn’t give a parking ticket to a car parked halfway across a pedestrian crossing because he didn’t have the right authorisation to do so, > “it was a police matter”
A very good article and some excellent comments. However, whichever way we look at the issue it boils down to the fact that there are two industries plying for the same business. One business, the licensed taxi market (black cabs) is a highly regulated industry, initially there is a barrier to entry, the Knowledge of London (KoL), where on average the student spends in excess of four years acquiring that qualification. The newly qualified taxi driver is then required to rent or purchase a taxi that is determined by TfL, there are only two brands available, both of which are extremely expensive and must be equipped with a wheelchair facility. Finally, the taxi driver is then told the tariff to charge in order to protect the public, so as we can see the one industry is highly regulated by TfL.
None of the above applies to the Private Hire or Mini-Cab industry and whilst this is the case the licensed taxi industry will never be able to compete on a level playing field.
So what is the answer? We either lower the standards regarding the qualification and regulation of the licensed taxi industry, which would quite rightly prove to be extremely unpopular with current taxi drivers, or we increase the qualification and regulation on Mini-Cabs. I believe the latter would be the correct route as it would also serve to curb the number of Mini-Cabs on the road, which would automatically lead to a reduction in pollution. Incidentally, the Mayor has stated that all new licensed taxis sold after 2018 must be zero emission, which again will place another burden on the licensed taxi industry.
Whichever side of the argument is favoured, what is abundantly clear is the licensed taxi industry in London will fail if it has to continue to trade under the current conditions and as someone pointed out earlier our taxis will become a tourist attraction , like the gondolas in Venice. That will be a great shame as it will be a service we had that was recognised as being the best in the world and just another example of us accepting a lowering of standards, we will be surrendering our excellence at a price, which is cost!
I have recently had some experience of Uber which has produced a number of lines of thought. The first was when my son, who is visiting from Tokyo with his wife, decided that it was easier to invest in a minicab from Pimlico to Bromley rather than try to get to get back to Victoria for the last train and then get home from Bromley South. He used the Uber app and a car was waiting outside the house they were visiting 4 minutes after he confirmed his order. For the princely sum of £23.00 they were transported the ten mile journey home. On the Sunday two days later a further car was used to take four of us from an hotel in Bromley to our home, about two miles. The wait was about six minutes and the cost was £4.00.
In order for a driver to make any money they must accumulate a high number of jobs per day. Whilst I am not aware of any limitation on drivers’ hours for any type of cab, the temptation must be to be on the road for long hours with the consequential road safety risks.
The question of traffic congestion caused by the rapid increase in the number of minicabs has been mentioned, their easy availability is also in danger of changing attitudes. Whereas previously we did not expect things to be done instantly there is a danger that we stop thinking about public transport because what is effectively private transport has become so cheap and convenient. At the risk of upsetting those who champion the cause of individual freedom should we not also be thinking of the “greater good” and restricting individual choice so that London does not become totally clogged up and preventing those who do use public transport to move about?
If the increasing move towards Uber type operations causes the collapse of the licensed black cab trade then it is vital that TfL take steps to ensure that the physically handicapped and similar difficulties are not discriminated against, as well as those who, for whatever reason, do not have a smartphone.
@Castlebar that may have been true 20 years ago (I was blissfully ignorant of parking legislation before $day_job changed that), however paras. 3(2)(c) and 4(2)(c) of Schedule 7 to the Traffic Management Act 2004, which I believe came in to force in 2007. It’s a code 99 higher rate civil contravention – see http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/services/parking-services/parking-and-traffic/parking-information-professionals/contravention-code. Reg. 7(1) of The Civil Enforcement of Parking Contraventions (England) General Regulations 2007 (SI 2007 No. 3483) provides that “No criminal proceedings may be instituted and no fixed penalty notice may be served in respect of any parking contravention occurring in a civil enforcement area, except a pedestrian crossing contravention”, which is why it remains the only parking contravention which the police can enforce. Unless the police are attending for something rather more serious, like a pedestrian being run over while crossing, an FPN/NOIP is probably unlikely to result from parking on zig zags unless PC Savage is in a really bad mood.
Marek,
the traditional licensing system is a start in dealing with a the trust issues in the system, but they are still considerable. Talk to any minicab driver and they will talk about the number of punters who run off without paying. And people who go out in central London a lot at the weekend will no doubt tell you about minicab drivers who try to up the agreed fare on spurious grounds. Trust levels are poor, more so in the private hire sector (I admit that my first post was slightly unclear as to my meaning here). Websites and apps that make both sides into known actors reduce these problems, ensure payment and thus reduce fares.
Greg,
all taxi & minicab drivers in London are supposed to be checked for criminal records (a version of a ‘fit and proper person’ assessment). For my sins, I have had some professional involvement in administering this and it was like herding cats.
FPN Fixed Penalty Notice
NOIP Notice of Intended Prosecution. Also abbreviated as NIP.
PCN Penalty Charge Notice
Rover,
Just to be clear (again), as I understand it, Fixed Penalty Notices can no longer be issued by PC Savage. What PC Savage must now do is to put in a report and this is then evaluated and if appropriate a FPN (or a NOIP) will then be issued. It is partly to get over the “PC Savage was in bad mood that day” issue that the decision to issue an FPN is decided dispassionately (I would say disinterestly but many people attach the wrong meaning to that) in the back office. This will hopefully produce more of a level playing field when deciding when to prosecute and when a letter of advice “we will not prosecute on this occasion …” is sent.
Thank you Rover. 20 years ago that would be right then.
Those who parked on the yellow lines got ticketed by the warden. She (I state this only for accuracy) who parked on the pedestrian crossing came back to find all the other cars ticketed but not hers. As a more serious offence, it was above the traffic warden’s pay grade to deal with it, and she therefore was able to drive away ticketless before a policeman became available to attend.
I think it needs to remain both a taxi & minicab market. Taxis are great for local journeys and available instantly and minicabs are good for longer out of town journeys on a fixed price. The fact that TFL have allowed uber to merge the 2 markets is wrong. People moan that the black cabs have had it too easy for too long but there’s always been healthy competition. Black cabs need to modernise and should all except cashless payments and should also look to be available on an app. With London getting more congested each day I believe the knowledge still has a place although this could change in the future. The biggest problem with these app based operators is that when you hit the button on your phone app to request a minicab it is just a modern way of putting your hand up to hail a cab which is against the law so TFL need to look at this as these laws were made to protect the public. The free market comments are a load of rubbish as taxis are heavily regulated so can only compete on service and not price. In an ideal world minicabs, taxis and uber will remain in London so the public can make their own choices but TFL really need to step up. I have a funny feeling that TFLs handling of this will become very embarrassing for Boris as so far they’ve showed they’re not up to it.
@Paul,
Using the uber app to ‘hail’ a cab is equivalent to ringing a minicab firm on your mobile. You could be standing on a street corner while ringing this minicab firm, or you could be sitting at home. It is mobile phones which have changed the game for the taxi industry, not the uber app. Uber were just clever enough to devise an app which automates the process of requesting a minicab and negotiating the fare.
Black cabs are fine for trips within central London, or for a trip home from a major station/airport, but they are otherwise useless in the suburbs – I have no idea how you would go about ‘hailing’ a black cab by phone or from your home.
Either black cabs have to modernise, or they are history. They can’t fight the tide of change.
@ChrisMitch – I think you are right to draw a distinction between the central area and the rest of London (or indeed the rest of the country). Within the central area, the economics work for black cabs: the mesh of journeys is very diffuse and demand is dense, and the cabbie can be reasonably sure of a follow-on hire within a short time. Out in the suburbs, taxis rarely ply for hire and once you get into the country areas, the choice is either to book one or go to one of the few taxi stands, typically by the railway station, or shopping centre. (Which is what seems to happen in much of the developed world anyway). When did anyone last hail a cab in Ealing, say?
Not sure where this leaves us- plying for hire is for central London only, at best; elsewhere the crossover between prebooked cabs and prebooked minicabs/Ubers seems complete. This suggests another aspect to future regulation: access to stands.
Just to highlight what Chris Mitch says …
Suppose you see a Mini Cab parked up with the driver on board. You approach him and he tells you that he can’t pick you up off the street because he is not a taxi. You then phone the number on the side of the mini-cab and give your name. The cab company allocates the cab in front of you for your journey. The driver then asks if you are Mr x. You say you are and you get in.
At Purley station there is a taxi rank and a minicab office with the minicabs parked outside. If you want a taxi you approach the first cab in the queue. If you want a mini-cab you open the door of the office and ask for a mini-cab. You don’t even need to step inside. They then tell you the first mini-cab in the queue is yours. No real difference and perfectly legal.
Although everyone is talking about taxis, the real game changer was the mobile phone followed by the smart phone, before these were invented, when you were out (and not in central London) you had to find a public phone to order a cab, effectively the mobile phone enabled you to ‘hail’ a cab where ever you are by phoning the mini-cab company – the smart phone then meant that you could look up the number for a local cab company if you were in an unfamiliar place, this has naturally been refined down, (I believe in some countries the mini cab is required to return to base, before being sent out again, even if its nearby when the call comes in).
Many black cabs hang around areas of high traffic anyway – like rail stations and airports, I wonder how many of the black cabs moving around central London are merely on their way back to a taxi rank after doing a job, if they get hailed in the meantime then that’s a bonus.
Two issues are being conflated: business model and quality standards. They should be considered separately.
London has no place getting involved in business model. If an app works, then that is fine and the regulator shouldn’t interfere.
But quality standards should be imposed on all vehicles and drivers uniformly whether Black Cabs, Addison Lee or Uber:
1. Every vehicle should be disabled accessible and subject to strict technical requirements for emissions and turning circle.
2. Every driver should be a licensed fit and proper person.
I remain completely mystified as to what the intended societal benefit of dividing hire vehicles strictly into “ones that can be hailed” and “ones that can be booked” is supposed to be. No matter if it works or not, what did those who made the laws that way think they were achieving?
Over here, you can either call for a taxi or step out in the street and hope one you can hail happens to come by. It’s the same taxi, the same driver and the same taximeter rates in both cases, except that starting fare is a little higher if you booked it in advance. This seems to cause no problems that separating the fleet into bookable and hailable cars could possibly mitigate.
The idea that only minicabs hover around waiting for work and obstructing the highway is surely mistaken – see the queues of black cabs at places like Waterloo stretching way beyond the “do not queue beyond this sign” sign, obstructing everything else.
And I don’t follow the bus lane argument – yes they obviously have to get to the kerb to pick up or drop off a fare (and I’ve seen taxis stop for this purpose in some very stupid places, with apparent impunity), but this doesn’t mean they need to be in the bus lane at any other time. (And in any case, taxis are not the only vehicles that need to drop off passengers: I gave a lift to a 95-year old disabled lady yesterday – would I be expected to leave her in the middle of the road if there was a bus lane outside her house?)
The distinction between pre-booked and plying for hire has become eroded by technology, and is becoming increasingly artificial. By all means there should be a level playing field – whether by harmonising the vehicle specifications, or reducing the requirements for “the knowledge” (and how many taxi users know or care what the difference between a green badge and a yellow badge is?) , or some other means.
By the way, a minor error: “Black Cabs have, for almost a hundred years (since the Hackney Carriage Act 1831), …..” 1831 was actually rather more than a hundred years ago: 184 to be precise!
[Corrected. Thanks. PoP]
Hackney Carriages have not always had to be fitted with taximeters. It was only ever a requirement for motor cabs.
I comment as somebody who has used black cabs and latterly also minicabs frequently since I commenced work, both for business and pleasure/need.
Firstly the north (of the River)/south divide: when I lived in Zone 2 – Essex Road area – there was normally a stream of black cabs for hire returning to the City/West End. However, because of the reluctance (not just hearsay but a mass of personal experiences) for black cabs to agree to go into similarly-populated South London, even long before the Brixton riots and no matter what they were supposed to do, this meant that was a dearth of black cabs south of the River/Waterloo and thus available to hail when returning to the centre. This sparked the blossoming of the minicab business there.
These days, it is easy to find a black cab in the West End to go south and often, if late at night, one finds that the driver is going home in that direction anyway. Before, most cabbies lived in East London, having been made redundant in the docks or in the print (Fleet Street). What does surprise me is where many cabbies live these days – as far away as Chelmsford, Bishops Stortford, Southend and Ramsgate. I could never quite understand the logic of all that non-revenue running but some drivers have been fortunate enough to secure long-term contracts with regular passengers who use those cabs over such distances when starting off in the mornings or who have local, private work, ferrying disabled school children around and the like.
In fact, the actual cost of purchasing a black cab has come down, high as it may seem today. At one time, a cab driver would be paying up to twice the cost of his mortgage. Of course, one could say that house prices have risen disproportionately.
Croydon is a yellow badge area for black cabs; thus, as explained above, they are not permitted to ply for hire outside their yellow badge area but they can take ‘fares’ for those who want to go as far as the central area. At one time, there were only three or four black cabs at any time at the East Croydon station rank. If one was not close to the front of the queue, then one had to wait until a taxi returned from the journey one saw set off earlier. There were then no minicab offices in the area. These factors opened up the obvious gap in the black cab trade, which minicabs were permitted to fill. Today, however, I understand that there some 60+ yellow badge taxis licensed to service East Croydon alone! Croydon also has long had designated taxi stands elsewhere, so one need not go, even without a mobile device, to the station to hire a taxi (the taxi stand might be empty of course but just stand around a bit).
These days, I use my local, reliable minicab firm to book e.g. an essential journey from Herne Hill to e.g. St. Pancras for early morning departures on Eurostar. I regret that I cannot afford to witness the vagaries of the railways these days, no matter how closely to the departure time at Herne Hill the train running may be checked. There are too many track side failures and other incidents to ensure that a prompt arrival at St. Pancras is guaranteed – and why, if possible, should I have to take an earlier train ‘just in case’? In this case the local, reliable minicab firm wins. It is comparatively difficult to book a black cab by telephone. Will I ever forget to ring the likes of an easy number as 7733 3333 for a minicab?
Finally, if I need a cab on the street in the central area, then the black cab wins. Get a good, chatty driver and often I am told to pay a fare below what’s shown on the meter (hint: judge where he’s from and then start going on about the good old days in the print or the docks, Mrs. T. &c.). By all means give a tip to a black cab driver worth his salt. The black cabs still have their place and deserve support. I am not clear how Uber would have a place in any of my experiences, present or future.
Just picking up on timbeau’s comment re. bus lanes, there are bus lanes for buses exclusively (normally short lanes through traffic junctions) and bus lanes that can be shared by black cabs – taxis (but not minicabs).
I thought the sensible logic behind that was that TfL and its predecessors considered taxis to be a form of public transport and thus deserving of bus lane use, bearing in mind that there wouldn’t have been so many taxis as today when the bus lanes were introduced.
I’ve been following this debate with interest, but I didn’t want to post because I thought I would just get into the many, many taxi and minicab anecdotes that all people in London pick up over the years.
So, I just want to add a few points. I think that @Theban makes a very good point about “quality standards”, but I think I am going to have to say that I think that the underlying points are more important.
It isn’t important that “standards should be imposed on all vehicles”, what is important is that the needs of the standards for passengers can be met when necessary.
So, for example, a person in a wheelchair should have the same access to transport as everyone else. The laws or regulations should state THAT, but be unspecific about the HOW. Let’s the (free or regulated) market get wheelchair accessible cabs to every person in a wheelchair that needs one. That is fine. But all cabs/taxis don’t need to have this.
This could be replicated for each part of the service, but I would just be waffling.
I also just wanted to add in a little bit about the technology, as this is my field. As I have said before, I worked on GPS when it was the system that got cruise missiles into the air.
The “civilian” system is often misrepresented. Yes, the service is provided using a set of satellites, but only on received signals. The system is 100% accurate, but the “civilian” service has a small randomized error added into it so it can’t be used to guide missiles into buildings (a good thing). But, unlike you see on TV or movies sometimes you can never SEND a signal to GPS.
This leads to a second point about GPS-navigation. This falls into three categories. The first model is the “offline” system where a unit is bought from a shop and it’s as good as the day you buy it, but never gets any better (like a paper A to Z, perhaps). A second level of box will be able to update the software in the box with new locations and postcodes (and yes, voices) from time to time.
The third model, as found with Google Maps based system has nothing much in the handset (which is a Smartphone). Being online, the box has the GPS receiver and a screen, but the data processing is “in the cloud”. This means that a powerful server can take up-to-date information and plan routes. This includes live traffic information (from the likes of TrafficMaster) as well as upcoming predictions about traffic volumes (based on vast collections of recorded data).
The software can also use live information from devices using Google Maps to also add to the data known about traffic speeds.
The point being is the Knowledge can never beat a live, online system with access to live and historical traffic records as well as maps. Sorry, but the Knowledge compared to what Google knows is, puny.
These services are provided using API (Application Program Interface) connections: this means that third parties can leverage the underlying system and build it into theirs. That’s why, Uber can tell you how long one of their cars would take to get to you, because the API can give as many what-if answers are you need.
The main question about Uber is not really just about the technology (apps, APIs, billing and so on) but the management will and political know-how (oh and money) to challenge the legal monopolies of taxi services.
Briantist,
Just a small point but I believe that the inaccuracy deliberately introduced into GPS for civilian purposes was switched off years ago. The absurdity could be seen when it was established that the US Department of Defense (military) spent millions of dollars to introduce it and the US Coastguard (civilian) were spending even greater sums to circumvent it.
Graham H
It is now usual to find 2 or 3 Black Cabs awaiting custom outsdie Walthamstow C station, of an evening …..
Graham F
Until the old main hall at Battersea burnt down, it was usual, on the Friday night after the Beer-festival closed & we’d totalled up the takings (actually, usually about 00.45 on Sat-morning by then) for me to hail a Black Cab to take me back to Walthamstow.
So plenty sarf o’ river now.
I never had to wait for more than about 3 minutes for one with a light on to appear.
@Henning Makholm – whilst entirely agreeing with your point about the reality of the non-distinction between plying and booking (out here in the Surrey countryside, unless you happen to be outside Godalming station, you have always had to book a cab), I suspect that the origin of the distinction is accidental (ie in 1831, booking would have been impractical*) . In a rational world and starting now, you wouldn’t draw that distinction for all the reasons adduced.
*I did briefly have a whimsical Steampunk vision of people sending their servants out to the nearest livery and bait establishment… [Perhaps the nearest anyone ever got at the time was during the great Reform crisis of, err, 1831-1832, when it became necessary for William IV to dissolve Parliament at once; on being told that it would take a few hours to prepare the State Coach, he remarked that in that case, he would go in a hansom cab. The dates are probably coincidental…]
@Briantist – “The point being is the Knowledge can never beat a live, online system with access to live and historical traffic records as well as maps. Sorry, but the Knowledge compared to what Google knows is, puny.”
Does your preferred system ask the passenger when in the cab things like “Which way do you want to go, Guv?” and “Do you prefer Waterloo or Westminster Bridge/via Camberwell or the Oval?” and so on? That sort of service relies on the response of the passenger, not the driver. Moreover, instant traffic disruption encountered with the Mark 1 eyeball can direct a proper cabbie brain to divert around a side street or two within a second.
The taxi meter was invented because the cab men of the day would adjust their prices according to busy periods/how desperate you was (Uber price surge!)
The London cab trade conducted itself in this way and was forced to change via legislation over hundreds of years and of course is constantly evolving.
No one has given me a good enough reason to abandon a highly regulated industry in favour of one that’s regulated by corporates hungry for profit.
I have at least 20 images of ph drivers driving the wrong way down one way streets. One of them was driving up Park Lane the wrong way for heavens sake!
Imagine the route from your house to your parents house for example, you know that route and all it’s alternatives like no other, even GPS!
That’s how we know London…
For me, Uber boils down to convenience. If any of your have ever arrived at Euston station and had to descend into that awful subterranean Black Taxi rank, you’ll know what I mean. I leaned from that lesson, and will now instruct an Uber driver to meet me in one of the nearby side streets, thus saving me from both a long walk and a potentially long queue as well.
Let’s take another case study, you’re sitting in a restaurant and it’s pouring with rain, as you and your friends are paying the bill, you log into Uber and book your car home. You know it’s going to cost you £17 and take 9 minutes, which is fine as you still have half a glass of wine anyway. As you and your friends drink up, you can monitor its location and get ready for your dash outside in the pouring rain, knowing exactly where your vehicle will be, and what type / reg to look out for. If you wanted to split the fare and drop someone off, that all easily achieved through the app too. None of this tutting about multiple drops that minicabs traditionally moan about.
For me, the cost benefits are a bonus, it’s the high tech customer focussed approach to providing a service that is the winner.
We live in a world where we all want what we want when we want it and that is here to stay…
Just to jump on the ‘groupage’ disruption theme that’s just around the corner – as ever the geeks in SF have the lead – this article highlights a few of these new app powered semi bus/taxi services: http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/23/8279715/san-francisco-bus-leap-loup-chariot
This is an excellent and balanced article. I would make two points.
The first is the concept of a “free market”. On occasion, the free market does not produce the desired outcome of society and producers. In such cases, the free market is subjugated to a regulated market and attendant conditions.
Such is the taxi/private hire business. The very reason for regulation is that the free market failed. Time has moved on. If the free market is now likely to produce the optimal outcome, there is no need for a regulator. However, if regulation remains necessary, it is pure nonsense to apply differing regulation ( and therefore costs) to different parts of the industry ( taxis, private hire and Uber) and then expect those disparate suppliers to compete in a free market.
The regulator cannot apply more onerous regulations on the taxi service without making this service price-uncompetitive. Therefore, the regulator has a duty to protect the taxi service from the free market or apply regulation consistely across the three services. Failure to do one or other will remove the least cost-effective service from the market altogether.
Not only will demand for the service fail, as it is doing currently, supply will also fail. The taxi supply is comprised of individual drivers rather than firms. If potential new recruits see the taxi service failing, they are likely to reject what is currently an average 51 months of training in favour of a virtually instantly awarded licence as a private hire driver.
The second point I would make is with regard to the mobility of the disabled. This produces a serious cost disadvantage to the taxi driver. Every taxi must be disabled-friendly. This includes features such as wheel-chair ramps, swivel seats and features for those with hearing and sight disability. There is no regulatory requirement for a single private hire vehicle to have any disabled-friendly features whatsoever.
This requirement on the taxi service does not come cheaply. Along with other “conditions of fitness” applied to taxis, this adds almost 25% to the price of a Mercedes taxi over and above a Mercedes MPV that can be use as a private hire vehicle in London.
Currently, the whole of the taxi-using public pay to allow the disabled to travel in London taxis at the same fares as the abled traveller, as is right and proper. If the taxi fleet were removed tomorrow, any disabled that were unable to use their own private vehicles or public transport, would have no way to travel in London.
The public would then be faced with a choice of abandoning the disabled traveller or forcing private hire vehicles to become disabled-accessible and increasing private hire fares to virtually those of the lost taxi service. Without doubt, a free market would abandon the disabled.
Of course, even if the regulator demanded disabled accessible private hire vehicle, on current form Uber would ignore such regulations and the regulator would allow them to do so.
@Pedantic of Purley
“Just a small point but I believe that the inaccuracy deliberately introduced into GPS for civilian purposes was switched off years ago.”
It was reduced, but it’s still there. You can see it if you attach a GPS device to a fixed point and read the output. This is the concept behind Differential GPS.
It was very clear on a trace I did between New Cross and New Cross Gate. I’m not sure how much more I know is an Official Secret still…
Just stepping back for the moment from the general wringing of hands about the fate of the black cab operation, the following strategic points seem to emerge:
1) There is a spectrum of both service offering and market demand, some confined only to central London for practical purposes. This is presently not well defined, with various regulatory cutoffs that bear little relation to reality
2) There is a general consensus that certain aspects of quality (vehicles and drivers) must be regulated in the public interest
3) One player (uber) uses technology to enforce its monopoly over an expanding market segment
4) The segment that is price regulated is also the most vulnerable
If you were starting from scratch as a regulator – and there’s no reason why TfL shouldn’t pursue the following:
a) a common standard for drivers and vehicles in terms of quality. For the most part this means bringing other players up to black cab standards (I leave on one side the question of the Knowledge – that may still win over GPS for now but there will come a time when it doesn’t, and that right soon unfortunately!)
b) If I couldn’t break Uber apart, I would invest – perhaps in alliance with such people as Google or Amazon – in rival, but open, back office and allocative systems
c) I would make these systems available to all drivers
d) Such back office systems (we are already there with Oyster, after all) would tell the punter what the price was for the desired journey in advance and settle with the cabbie via the punter’s debit/credit card.
Before someone rushes to shout “State Aids”, perhaps I might draw attention to the EU’s own (misconceived) plans to offer an alternative to Google.
I see a problem with making all private hire cars meet certain requirements (e.g accessibility, turning circle, emissions).
There is a niche market for hiring classic cars for special events such as weddings. For obvious reasons, these are usually hired with a chauffeur/owner rather than on a self-drive basis, and are presumably subject to similar rules as minicabs, or could be caught by any amendment to the rules to harmonise with hackney cabs.
A relative of mine once resorted to hailing a wedding-beribboned Roller in the street. The classic car booked to take him and the young lady he was giving away had failed to turn up (as is traditional, the rest of the family had all left for the church ahead of him) and he had gone looking for hitch a lift. As luck would have it, the first car he came across was already beribboned, having just finished taking some other couple to their reception. He hired it on the spot! Had that been in London, it probably wouldn’t have been legal.
The article says that 75,000 Fairways were made. The Fairway was only built between 1989 and 1997, so this would imply over 6,000 were built every year. The total must surely include the earlier FX4s, introduced in 1958, which used the same basic body. This gives a rather more plausible 1,500 per year, which given a service life of about fifteen years and a fleet of about 22,000, seems about right.
(I am assuming the relatively small number of sales outside London is cancelled lout by the small number of other makes of taxi within London over that period, of which the Metrocab was the commonest).
@ChrisMitch 30 May 2015 at 20:56
“but they are otherwise useless in the suburbs – I have no idea how you would go about ‘hailing’ a black cab by phone or from your home.”
The app is called “Hailo”. In leafy Ealing, I can usually get either a black cab or a minicab to appear at my door in about 5 mins. The choice is usually made by whether I have my child in his buggy or not – I’m prepared to pay more for a black cab which can take the buggy without folding it and taking the boy out. So a black cab is far from useless in the suburbs.
Conversely, in town, I generally prefer to fetch a cab using Hailo/Kabbee/Uber/AdLee, and then wait inside, stepping out just as it appears. It’s a much better experience than going out into the rain or cold, and spending 5 or 10 minutes shouting at passing yellow lights.
I’m afraid if you think the London black cab will take you “anywhere”, you haven’t tried to get one from London City Airport to the Excel Centre, or to Beckton.
An established minicab from here to Heathrow is about £50, but a black cab returning from there to here is close to £150.
Regarding taxi ranks, one was provided at Canning Town station when it was rebuilt in the late-1990s. I’ve never seen a single black cab plying for hire on it. So you see, it’s a real challenge in parts of London to get a black cab in the first place.
I haven’t totally absorbed where uber sits in the market. It seems as if it’s a private hire company with sub-contractors (individual drivers) providing the actual main part of the service. The disabled access requirement could be sorted by requiring firms controlling over a certain number of cars to ensure that a percentage (10%?) were fully accessible. uber would try all manner of tricks to avoid this, but the courts would probably uphold it in the end.
I would like to make just one more comment regarding the Aldi/Lydl being cheaper than Tesco analogy, and are we concerned about Tesco employees losing their jobs because people are switching to the cheaper supermarket.
Are Aldi able cheaper than Tesco because their employees are self employed and their wages subsidised using working tax credits?
@Graham H
I’m not sure if I understand “3) One player (uber) uses technology to enforce its monopoly over an expanding market segment”.
Uber is certainly making a lot of noise, but it isn’t a monopoly, it’s a Startup. Like all Tech Startups it is trying to expand as quickly as possible.
Just having a moment on Google I find http://time.com/3595621/uber-lyft-flywheel-sidecar/ that lists Lyft, Sidecar, Flywheel, Curb, Halio, Summon, RubyRide and Shudder which are all “in the same space”. I’ve used Halio myself quite a few times in London.
So, I can’t quite follow why you would, at this stage “break Uber apart”. Given that the market, and this is in London alone has everything from legal taxis, legal minicabs, not-so-legal minicabs though limo hire as well as market interventions like
Just because the state-sponsored monopoly of Black Cabs is being disrupted doesn’t seem to warrant intervention in the affairs of Uber. At least not at such an early stage.
One point about Uber and other online services: there leverage comes from their ability to design a product in one market (usually San Francisco) and then roll it out to other markets.
How on earth do you think TfL could have an international software hit? I hate to use these words, but the state would be trying to “pick a winner” and we’re back to British Leyland.
Great successful disruptive software development flows out of knowing what the customer wants, cutting out the middleman, great pricing, rock-solid reliability and then heaps of luck.
[Very slightly modified for tone at the start. PoP]
The argument that taxis had to have access to the kerb to pick up passengers seems to be being overridden by Boris segregated cycle lanes which are creating a barrier to the pavement from taxis !
While in some places bus lanes available to taxis are being replaced with cycle lanes thus forcing taxis and buses into general traffic .
This argument about uber sounds like a re-run of the time telephones became more widespread and people started to use phones at home or work to call for a taxi and taxi trade at first complained but then started showing phone contact details on cabs!
As for the way uber fares are paid well we now have cashless buses and many rail journeys made without cash , while go into shops and many customers use cards to often make small payments . The fact is cash is dying out raising the question of what happens if someone hails a taxi but only has a card to pay at the other end if taxi is only able to accept cash ?
The reality is today’s 21st Century generation uses IT for many things and ordering a taxi with a computer app is no different to ordering a takeaway pizza and doesn’t involve standing on a cold dark wet street hoping a taxi passes !
It’s whether ordinary taxi trade and as Brian Souter hinted buses can adapt to these new ways of working which can offer more trade or like Thames lighter men you die out !
It’s beginning to look like a complete review of taxis be they black cab, mini cab or the new version demonstrated by uber is needed to bring 19th Century rules into 21st Century , Afterall why can’t you pay for a taxi with Oyster ?
@Fandroid – it may not matter where Uber sits in the market. In practice, there’s a continuum from hail/ply to pre-booked individual transport without any obvious breakpoints. Regulation need not concern itself therefore with artificial constructs such as the present arrangement but focus rather on the public interest in all this – quality and price.
Henning,
It was never anyone’s intention to setup a two tier service. Minicabs came into being due to a loophole in the regulations that allowed them to provide their services if they were booked. Once that was up and running in large numbers, a move was made to regulate them. The public got what they wanted, without need for politicians to think it up in the first place.
@Graham H
“there’s a continuum from hail/ply to pre-booked individual transport ”
The spectrum goes further than that, in both directions. Buses also ply for hire (hail and ride) or pick up only at “ranks” (stops), but they usually only operate on fixed routes. In the other direction, beyond pre-booked minicabs (or private hire coaches – it’s just a question of scale), you have self-drive hire (i.e. the hirer drives) which merges into leased cars, on to hire purchase, and finally owner-drivers.
@timbeau – oh, I agree. And the break points in that wider spectrum are even more vague. “Separate fares” may be the line in the sand, fixed timetables another (but what to do with London high frequency routes which don’t run to a timetable?). The problem is not helped by the fact that the regulatory interests don’t obviously align to any of the logical breaks. Maybe pragmatism rules OK – as usual – hence by “if you can’t beat them, join them” thought that TfL should set up their own allocation and back office rival to Uber.
@timbeau – with apologies for a double post – behind this discussion of the public interest is the unpleasant sleeping gorilla of how to justify economic benefits – relatively easy with traditional bus services but with taxi/bus hybrids, then what?
@ GH
I’ve always wondered about the economics and hidden subsidies to “Hail & Ride” bus services that seem to go anywhere and everywhere but never in a straight line
Black Cabs do things & offer services (at a higher price) that uber mini-cabs don’t can’t or won’t.
But, uber minicab drivers do not have to pass any/some of the “fit & proper-person” rules that B-C drivers do.
If the services are driven by PRICE ONLY, then the specialist services offered by Black Cabs will disapear, & the disabled will be utterly shafted.
Do we, as a “society” wish to allow this to happen?
I think there is room in the skewed market for both, but that more intelligent regulation (carefully left unspecified here) is the answer.
And that said market needs de-skewing – again this is left as an exercise for the reader……
@Briantist: What various public sources say is that the apparent drift of a stationary GPS receiver is due to unpredictable natural variation in how much the ionosphere retards the satellite signals, and that is what Differential GPS and other GNSS augmentation schemes are intended to correct for.
It appears to be unlikely that there’s a secret deliberate error which is covered up publicly by blaming the ionosphere — because the Russian GLONASS system uses almost the same radio frequencies, and if the ostensibly-ionospheric delays for GPS varied independently of those for GLONASS, surely someone outside the capability of the US to silence would have wised up to it and published that by now.
Thanks, @Graham H and @anonymous 19:28.
So what I think I gather now is that originally the regulatory boundary was intended to cover the entire market for “individual transport, here and now”, because in 1831 “plying for hire” was the only technologically feasible way to serve that market. (And at that time anyone arranging for someone to drive them in advance would already be engaging in a complex transaction and have plenty of opportunity to do their own due diligence on the driver and vehicle, and so they would not need regulatory protection).
Seen in this light I also think I understand that the ban on taximeters in non-regulated vehicles is not because taximeters are in themselves particularly dangerous or in need of regulation, but because the presence of a taximeter was intended as a proxy for identifying vehicles that serve the “individual transport, here and now” market and bring them under regulatory control.
In the mean time, the technological development (starting with the telephone!) has soundly overtaken efforts to adjust the regulatory boundaries, and as a result a large part of the market it was originally intended to regulate is — purely by accident — not regulated to the same degree as that falling within the ply-for-hire definition. And I suppose the reason Black Cabs are not summonable is not because the regulator doesn’t want them to be, but that it would be futile for them to try to be, because they cannot compete on price with the unregulated (or lesser regulated) vehicles that can operate in that part of the market.
So what we’re seeing here is two different pushes from the licenced black-cab drivers:
First: They’re pushing against further erosion of the limits of the protected market where they can compete despite the costs of regulation, no matter whether those existing limits make sense in themselves or not.
Second: Simultaneously and independently, technology has (or is about to) obsoleted the licensed drivers’ substantial investment in learning the details of London by rote — at least in the economic sense that the service and travel time improvements “The Knowledge” yields are not worth so much to the traveling public that they will, on an open market, choose to pay enough of a premium for it to recoup that investment. Current drivers have an interest in maintaining an artificially level playing field by requiring a similar investment from all new entrants into the market, such that (at least some segment of) the traveling public won’t have the option of paying less for a perhaps slower GPS-assisted cab ride.
The first of these pushes seems fair to me. Many commenters here seem to agree that the regulations should apply more broadly than they do. The angry shouts may or may not be directed at someone who doesn’t have the power to expand the definitions (I’m not really clear about that), but it is fair to want regulations to apply as broadly as possible.
The second one smells a lot of trying to shovel back the tide.
Transport for London resistance to the London cabbie has not gone unnoticed within the trade. The higher management at TFL for some years have had personnel exchange of views with many London cab drivers, unions, and trade delegations. It has left a bitter taste on both sides. TFL as regulators are not as squeaky clean as some may think. People have mentioned technology as if cabbies were resistant to it. If i stood on a street corner ringing a bell, blowing a whistle, doing cartwheels, whatever, or brandishing a mobile phone in the air with one hand the law stands only a black cab can pick up.
@Henning Makholm
“What various public sources say…”
OK, believe them if you like. That’s OK with me. I only worked on the software myself so I know what I know.
[Thanks are due both to you and to Henning for indicating your reasons for your belief, and for admitting that the other may be right. The issue of the possible continued existence of deliberate GPS inaccuracy should not be discussed any further here. Malcolm]
@chris, if the cabbie trade pushes such technical arguments, I fear they risk losing the goodwill of Londoners and thence, ultimately, the battle itself.
If instead they push for abandonment of green badge knowledge requirements to reduce the costs of entry to the trade I think they would have widespread support and it’s hard to see how a free trade Mayor wouldn’t likewise support that piece of de-regulation. So far as the greater battle with under is concerned, I think reading these comments alone it is easy to see that only two arguments are likely to fnd widespread support in terms of greater regulation of Uber and its ilk: passenger safety (requiring drivers to be fit and proper persons) and the needs of disabled passengers (requiring vehicle standards).
(I disagree with Briantist that the needs of disabled passengers can be met by imposing requirements on Uber rather than on each vehicle. Regulation needs to be simple to be effective and that has to mean inspection of vehicles.)
I also disagree with those who say requirements for vehicles to convey wheelchairs should not extend to wedding hire etc. I see no reason why a disabled person’s needs should be less regulated because they are getting married than at other times – indeed since marital status is itself a protected characteristic in equality law such a regulatory exemption would probably be unlawful. An exemption for vehicles made before date yyyy would however make sense.
As far as I recall, it is only relatively recently that minicabs became subject to any regulation at all. TfL introduced minicab regs at about the same time as the London mayoralty was introduced didn’t they?
Before that, the only requirement for being a minicab driver was to have the correct type of car insurance (which many probably did not).
So I think there is room for further regulation of minicabs, and disabled access is an important point.
Is there any regulation of minicabs outside London?
I fear this comment may get lost, but when the article mentions hiring a car with Uber:
The customer then picks the vehicle they want
This isn’t strictly the case. The customer can pick the type of vehicle (bog standard, shiny Mercedes, people carrier, or in theory a black cab if any drivers have risked the anger of their peers) – the job is then offered to a nearby driver who can choose whether or not to accept. And just as passengers can rate their driver after a journey, drivers can rate passengers; and a low rating could affect your chances of a driver choosing to pick you up.
@ChrisMitch
Outside London the regulatory framework for taxis is completely different and all rests in the hands of the local authorities, and has done for many years. Whether to draw a distinction between ‘black cabs’ and ‘minicabs’ is a local decision. In some places there is no distinction made, while in others that traditional London type split exists but both decided by the local council.
In London, the ergulation of minicabs stems back to a piece of legislation introduced by Sir Peter Bottomley. This came after many years of debate where minicabs in London existed in a grey legal area. For a long time the black cab trade was trying to get minicabs off the road entirely and had resisted many previous attempts to regulate minicabs in London. This approach was entirely in line with other policy approaches by the black cab trade (such as the knowledge) designed to limit entry to the London taxi market. Some of these had positive impacts on issues such as personal safety but all were designed to limit supply. These included some arguments that were somewhat incongruous, such as the need to increase day time cab fares in order to improve supply of black cabs in the evenings and weekends.
As others have said, the arguments for regulation to improve safety and quality have become wholly confused with more narrow protectionism.
It will be interesting to see what impact Crossrail has on the black cab ranks at Heathrow.
With black cabs at Heathrow, if the fare is within a designated area of about 10 miles from Heathrow, the cabbie can get a ticket from the rank controller and this allows them to return to the front of the queue.
So if you get a black cab from Heathrow to, say, Chiswick, (just outside the area…), at best you can expect a sullen driver and at worst, audible obscenities.
However if you tell the cabbie you are going to, say, Brentford (just inside the area…) then the cabbie can get a ticket to return to the front of the queue. If you then tell them en route that you are actually going to the other side of the North Circular in Chiswick, you will probably have a more pleasant driver.
Anecdotally, of people I’ve met who are aware of the Heathrow arrangement, some are happy with subterfuge about the destination, others are determinedly against.
I’ve also met people weren’t aware of this arrangement who had a distinctly unfavourable impression of their cabbie based upon the reaction to their destination.
I have come to think that that pre-booked cars (booked by any means available) do not all need to be accessible for the disabled. What is essential is that if someone phones in and requires a disabled-access car, then one is available just as quickly as as a car that is not accessible. That therefore does not mean that every hire car has to be accessible, only that they are immediately available. This requirement may not fit the current mini-cab set-up but it would not take much in the way of re-organisation for it to work. (eg drivers/cars to be interchangeable with accessible cars only sent out to those who require them, until the entire fleet is busy). A regulator would need to decide what the right % of a fleet needs to be accessible and to enforce that number.
The ply for hire nature of black cabs means that they all have to be accessible to ensure that the disabled always get what they need when hailing one.
As I mentioned before, the cabbies are the successors of the Thames Watermen. Those who carried passengers were first licensed by the City Corporation in 1197. In 1555 an Act required only licensed Watermen to ply for hire between Gravesend and Windsor. They had to serve a seven-year apprenticeship and gain a complete ‘knowledge’ of all the tides and currents, creeks and landing places. It is easy to see them as direct forerunners of today’s cabbies because there was only one bridge and on the land the roads were fairly awful.
@Fandroid – does “accessible for the disabled” actually mean “accessible by a wheelchair” (access ramps, sufficient space, points to secure the chair) or are there different levels of accessibility?
Re Fandroid,
Waterman – which has all come to an end with the EU mandated National Boat Master Licenses a few years ago, may be the Taxi industry will also go through a major reformation?
@Fandroid
That is the way things work in this part of Wiltshire – and very effective it has proved to be. All cab firms with 4 or more vehicles are required to have 25% wheelchair accessible and the controller dispatches the next available to you. On those occasions when we have used the service we have never had to wait more than 5 minutes.
A complete contrast with South Gloucestershire where the local authority had no such requirement. A couple of years ago the wheelchair hoist on our car failed when we were at Cribbs Causeway. An hour of calling around failed to locate an accessible cab for my wife to get home. In the end we called a local cab company at home to come and fetch us.
@Paying Guest. Yes, I have experience of South Gloucestershire taxis, although I don’t need wheelchair accessible ones. They fit into the ‘least effort’ category, all being normal saloon cars. Possibly that comes from the area not really being ‘urban’ although it has a big population in the northern Bristol sprawl. Your experience sounds dreadful. I hope you complained to the Council.
I am pleased to hear that my theory seems to work (in Wiltshire) with 25% accessible as the going rate.
Reading Borough went over to ‘black cabs’ for its taxis a decade or two ago. The reasoning then was simple: they were worried about the numbers increasing to such an extent that the queuing taxis were becoming a nuisance, so as a restraint they changed the rules to make entry a lot more expensive! Here in Basingstoke we have black cabs, and they are the only ones allowed in the main rank at the station. However, there’s a minicab office actually within the station building!
The archetypical image of London to ‘forriners’ is a black cab going around Piccadilly Circus or across Tower bridge. They both meet a need and have a defined level of increased safety and quality which others cannot hope to meet.
If you permit minicabs to encroach upon the hackney carriage regulations then, eventually, the black cab industry will completely disappear. And minicabs will then increase their prices because there is now no alternative in that particular market. This predatory pricing followed by increases once the incumbents have been forced out has many precedents.
Possible options:
a) Limit type operations by location – Within a specified area (zone 1 & 2?) only black cabs are permitted to pick up. All cab types may drop off.
b) Limit by delay: Where only black cabs can ply for hire, Uber at al are finessing this distinction. Re-define ‘book in advance’ from the present effectively measured in seconds to a minimum delay of, perhaps, 15 minutes. For those booking a car to take them home after a party this makes minimal difference, likewise for an early morning cab to the airport or station, but it would remove the pi**-taking uber.
c) Limit by numbers – that massive growth in minicabs (and the concomitant increased noise and noxious fumes) needs to be brought under control somehow. Limiting the number of companies and the number of cabs each may operate would start to control this.
btw, on the access to kerbs point, minicabs of all species presently stop on double yellows, red routes, in bus lanes, etc. to collect their “pre-booked” clients. Is this, though, in fact illegal?
Couple of points I omitted:
Re the Milton Keynes experience of “I get told the make, model, colour and registration number of ‘my’ vehicle” I don’t want to have to search out the car – especially if the weather is like it is outside at the moment! (driving wind and rain), I just want to get in the one at the front of those waiting. And how does that one I’m searching for not get blocked by others waiting, dropping off, etc? The “Taxi Rank” principle is, imho, a good thing not just for barristers but also for, um, taxis.
And in a black cab I can change my mind mid-route as to where I want to go. Can Uber and the rest let me do this? How do they charge? And if I refuse to go on?
(btw, many cabs have rear / passenger doors locked by the driver which, surely, prevents run-aways.)
@ Graham F – I fear that if I talked about Mrs T to a taxi driver that I’d be thrown out of the cab. 🙂
Your reference to the docks / the print and others to watermen is interesting in that these were skilled trades with high union power or restrictions to the numbers employed through skills / regulations. However there is perhaps a lesson here for the black cab drivers? – all those other trades were eventually crushed by employers or the market place or by regulation. The workers held out to protect their positions but circumstances overtook them.
There have been some very eloquent and thoughtful comments above. I think there is merit in ensuring the safety of the public and accessibility but I fear market restrictions / protectionism for black cabs will ultimately fail. I can’t see the public being willing to have their choice restricted and being forced to pay higher fares just to save part of the market supply. They may accept it in order to ensure public safety and to ensure a supply of accessible transport.
To answer Steve’s query about supermarkets – I made the original analogy. All I was saying was that the public really don’t give a damn about the consequences of lower prices in some supermarkets where this means workers in the other less price competitive supermarkets lose their jobs. The black cab drivers seem to be trying to deploy an “emotional” argument to the public that somehow their trade, and therefore their jobs, deserves to be saved. All I’m saying is that I doubt many people really care or even give it a second thought. They vote with their wallets or on the basis of convenience as seen in several of the comments above. I can’t comment because I don’t use black cabs, minicabs and Uber or anything like them. I’ve been in a black cab twice in 32 years and a minicab once in the same time period in London. I’ve used taxis in Singapore more times than in London purely because reaching the airport is nigh on impossible on public transport. I’ve done it once and ended up exhausted and soaked through in the humid conditions. I still hate incurring the extra cost of taxis though. I don’t think emotional or “part of London heritage” type arguments will work these days.
Black cabs may be an iconic part of the international image of London, but so were red phone boxes and Routemaster buses. Maybe in the future like those two icons they will survive only in the touristed parts of the West End?
@WW: yes, I agree on analogy with other occupations – it is easy with hindsight to say that the print unions, for example, should have tried to adapt to technological change in the 1980s instead of fighting it. But it would have required more far-sighted leadership at the time and would the union members have been persuaded?
Guards on the underground were also supplanted by technology but there, despite many disputes, in the end the unions negotiated probably the best outcome for their members they could (the opportunity to retrain as a driver). By comparison the black cab leaders seem more to be going down the SOGAT ’82 route of political pressure and appeals for public support.
One problem is that it might be in the interest of black cabs as a whole for the rules about the Knowledge to be relaxed (as various commenters here have argued), but it isn’t in the interest of any existing individual black cab driver to have more competition, and to have their multi-year investment in time and money learning the Knowledge rendered worthless.
Alison W & everyone else after her comment …
“The Answer” to these connected problems seems to be better directed regulation.
We do not want or need too many unlregulated minicabs.
We need “fit & proper person” regulations.
We need disabled access (for a decent proportion of vehicles)
Surely something could be worked out that covers all these bases?
provided, of course that TfL & the London Assembly can get their collective heads around the problem-sets?
A link provided on another thread by Jonathan Roberts has thrown up this letter from Peter Hendy to Caroline Pidgeon as to the legal advice received on the legality of Uber in London.
Reading it I cannot but help think that this reinforces my personal belief that black cab drivers are still trying to fight the last war and the sooner the system is completely overhauled the better.
@PoP – a very interesting letter that underlines the futility of trying to apply century-old legislation to modern technology. More strategically, it also emphasises the need for the debate about the cab trade to be conducted in terms of first principles about thenatureand purposeof regulation, not in terms of finding a nice legal loophole. [Soon, we shall hear, no doubt, about the bale of hay that jarvies were – or may be, still are – required to keep in their vehicle and the need to test the horn* before starting off…]
* A tricky one, this, as it was also a requirement of the same legislation that sounding the horn whilst stationary was illegal.
@Pedantic of Purley, 2 June 2015 at 09:23
According to the letter the argument comes down to whether a ‘device’ is used for fare calculation, then whether it is affixed to the vehicle or not. With small electronic devices being so ubiquitous today, this must be a non-winnable argument in the long run. The calculation could take place ‘in’ the customers phone or ‘in’ the cab firm’s server and the result transmitted back to the driver without there being a specific device in the car. What’s that? a ‘proxy device service’? Would a piece of string laid on a map and measured, a manual office calculator then used with a printed table of multipliers count as such a device? what about a pen and jotter used by the driver for long arithmetic? mental arithmetic? Many minicabs outside London use onboard meters without the right to ply or use specific Hackney carriage ranks and that works well here in Torquay for instance. Some larger minicab firms have centrally located offices that also act as defacto ranks with small waiting rooms as well. Black cab drivers in London need to give up on the ridiculous meter issue and concentrate on preserving their unique rights to ply and use their dedicated ranks at stations etc.
I’m surprised to see so little discussion in this thread of the way black cabs (with compliant mayors) have priced themselves out of the market and become the preserve of wealthy tourists and bankers. Heathrow to Chiswick costs well over £40 – and, as one poster mentioned, is likely to get you an earful of abuse from the driver into the bargain. The City to Chiswick is about the same. A minicab is around half that. The fact that only a small minority can afford black cabs may actually be an argument for excluding them from bus lanes rather than inviting minicabs in.
The posh minicab industry started because so many black cab drivers were spending their evenings outside City offices on radio calls, waiting with the meter running for their passengers to turn up – which was also a major cause of the shortage of cabs plying for hire that the fare hikes were meant to address.
I don’t disagree that the vehicle standards make them expensive to run, and the sooner there’s a hybrid or electric cab on the streets the better. I walk past Liverpool Street station every day and the long line of black cabs idling there, belching fumes and tailing back to obstruct the red route on Bishopsgate, highlights the contribution cabs make to London’s abysmal air quality. A subsidised programme to replace the FX4 with a hybrid or electric would be a big help to air quality, and good way to help drivers compete more effectively with Uber.
@Andy R
“A subsidised programme to replace the FX4 with a hybrid or electric would be a big help to air quality”
The FX4 (latterly known as the Fairway) was replaced in 1997 by the TX series (currently TX4). 1997 was also the year the Toyota Prius was launched.
If you relax / remove “The Knowledge” requirement you make worthless the substantial cash-and-time investment that black cab drivers have made in their job. Unless you are ok with recompensing that massive loss then surely it is a non-starter?
Greg T – Yes.
@Alison W – yes, but the same argument would apply equally to all those who invested time and money in becoming printers or barber-surgeons or ostlers (or hangmen…). I know it isn’t “fair” to cabbies, but the rest of us have all had to face similar upheavals in our working lives, why should they be protected?
Graham H – very true, though I believe all (most?) black cab drivers are self-funded / self-employed, rather than being trained by the companies they work for as most of us are.
The chart way-up-above showed their numbers are pretty much constant and greatly outweighed by minicabs of all descriptions. They have different market segmentation so I hope that there is some way to retain that benefit, even though, yes, everything changes over time.
(I remember when the computers I used were ginourmous beast with valves in and had dials and lots of knobs and flashing lights. Now they fit in my pocket)
@Greg Tingey:
We do not want or need too many unlregulated minicabs.
Define “we”, define “too many”, define a fair process for determining how many is “too many”, and note that minicabs are not unregulated anyway…
provided, of course that TfL & the London Assembly can get their collective heads around the problem-sets
The law is set by Parliament, not the Mayor or Assembly. TfL are only following the duty set them by Parliament to enforce the law, not helped by the ambiguity of the law as it stands.
@AlisonW: a different way of looking at it would be that anyone who has passed the Knowledge has demonstrated exceptional dedication and phenomenal memory and attention to detail, qualities that should be attractive to employers in many different fields even if the actual content of the Knowledge is less and less valuable. Plus driving of one kind of another isn’t dying out as an occupation yet. Not much solace if you want to spend the rest of your career driving black cabs, of course, but they are at least in a better position than a lot of coal miners, merchant seamen, dockers etc.
Ian J
“We” – being the inhabitants of London (I think) & our visitors.
“too many” -See the ongoing discussion above, especially with regard to road congestion, pollution & the “fit & proper person” requirements.
There should be room here for both mincabs & Black Cabs, but the regulations need a complete re-write, also as many have suggested.
“The law is set by Parliament”
Oh, do come on, please!
TfL/London Assembly will present a Bill to Parliament, just as BR & the private companies used to do.
It is therefore Tfl/LA’s DUTY to present a Bill which re-sets the requirements & ground rules for any future operation of taxis ( of whatever sorts ) in London.
What is certain is that we cannot simply proceed as before, under the existing rules.
A proper, careful re-write is going to be needed, & soon.
Greg, timbeau,
The law is set by Parliament
Whilst Greg’s point in response is a valid comment as a standalone comment, it is not valid in the context the sentiment surrounding the comment made by timbeau. A classic case of twisting things rather than taking the original comment in the context it was made.
It was made in response to suggesting that TfL should sort out the mess with the law as it is. The law being what it is and laid down by Parliament there is not much TfL can do.
Having said that, Greg has a very valid point that it would be ridiculous to wait for Parliament to take the initiative. Why would they take the initiative? What is in it for them apart from grief?
For many issues Parliament responds to proposals made as Greg has pointed out. If the Mayor is proposing to lobby Parliament to outlaw, or at least regulate, pedicabs then there is absolutely no reason why the Mayor (prompted by TfL who would do the groundwork) proposing a complete overhaul of the cab/minicab regulations in London. I really can’t understand why this isn’t being talked about. Just about everyone (Assembly, Mayor, cabbies, TfL) seem to be arguing about what is the right kind of sticking plaster to use in order to avoid facing up to surgery. If done promptly I really don’t think the current Mayor would have any problem in getting his views talked about in Downing St in preparation for an eventual change in the law.
@ PoP – you are correct that TfL can promote bills with the hope that they will pass in to law. I think at least two TfL bills have made it into law while one was talked out of the last parliament. I suspect the real issue is that there is no consensus view as to what a new regime would look like. Whatever was proposed would incur someone’s wrath and has been mentioned several times technology is part of the problem. As soon as something was framed in a bill then the techies would invent something that got round it or companies would restructure to circumvent it. I know the black cab trade are not happy but the immediate issue is a legal resolution as set out in the TfL letter. That judgement would probably bring an element of clarity one way or another and thus enable a bill to be better framed in terms of resolving the immediate issues where a legal change was needed. I still feel, though, that the law can’t fix all of the issues affecting the black cab trade because the market is changing.
I admit I have very rarely used London black cabs. the last occasion must have been 10 years ago or more on a Sunday morning from Paddington to Kings Cross for a fairly tight connection when the Circle line was closed for engineering work. I recall it as ‘reassuringly expensive’ but a quick run with no congestion at least meant no frustrating waiting time charges. A young acquaintance from Torquay recently visited London for the very first time for a weekend break and made the following observation as a first response to my question on her impressions of the city: “the taxis were extortionate!” She said. She had made a couple of late evening trips out from the west end to where she was staying somewhere near Chiswick.
Walthamstow Writer,
Yes I sort of agree with that. But the problem of technology can be got around. You could for example enable variations to be made by statutory instrument rather than have to go back to Parliament each time. I think that is what happens with TfL byelaws which they can amend fairly easily. The last change I know was to clarify that “vaping” amounted to smoking. Done without fuss.
Alternatively you give the power to a statutory London Taxi Commissioner who has terms of reference and is free to change the exact rules. Of course if he/she exceeds their authority we have the fun of a judicial review. Who would want the job though?
PoP
Don’t tempt me!
Especially if it was a “London Fares & Transport Commission” with a remit to encourage proper economic use of & charging for all transport resources “inside the M25”
I’ll take it for £100k a year + a 1st-class all-lines “Priv”.
( cough )
@ Greg – far too modest a bribe, sorry remuneration, just asking for a First Class priv. Surely a Gold Pass covering All Lines, Stations and Ships would be required? All those visits to compare best practice on taxi operation across the UK would surely require one. 🙂
Mistyped that … should have read “…+ a 1st-class all-lines Pass”, oops!
I fear the LR Towers budget could barely stretch to offering a lifetime pass on the Woolwich Ferry.
@Alison
Technological not regulatory change has undermined the value of those who have already passed the knowledge. The trade needs to accept that and then fight on disabled access and passenger safety.
@Walthamstow Writer
You have expressed the view that techies would quickly innovate around any new law. In that you have only repeated what others are saying so I’m only citing you as the most recent to say it. Forgive me …
… Because I disagree. There are essential two fundamental fare models:
1. A fare calcukated from actual distance travelled and journey duration (let’s call it dynamic fares).
2. A fare based on a book on the cost to travel from various places to other places (zones) regardless of actual distance travelled or journey duration (let’s call it fixed fares).
Both might be modified for evenings / weekends etc.
Now in those terms it is easy to frame a law which says that Hackney Carriages may use the dynamic model but other operators must use a fixed fare model based on zones which, say, are at least one square mile in size. With rules to prevent gaming the system with odd-shaped zones, there’s no way technological innovation could break the intent or effect of such a law.
I agree that a law related to how dynamic fares are calculated are vulnerable to technological innovation but if you step beyond the “how” of dynamic fares to the underlying concept, a law can be robust.
Another warning from a bus operator about the “Uber Time Bomb” –
http://www.passengertransport.co.uk/2015/06/uber-%E2%80%98nuclear-bomb%E2%80%99-is-heading-for-transport/
Interesting that Transdev also run a London taxi business so are seeing it from both sides of the argument.
@ Theban – I am not sure what your differentiated tariff structure does even if you frame it in law. Surely the issue we have is that price is already a differentiator with more and more people voting with their wallets for the cheaper services. Technology is eroding the black cab’s perceived advantages of the Knowledge and plying for hire. Therefore whatever advantage a different mandated tariff structure brings you have not dealt with black cabs being vastly more expensive and barely any more convenient than the alternatives. The only answer to preserve the black cab trade is to legislate to restrict supply hugely, mandate expensive vehicles, have massive enforcement resoures to ensure supply remains legally restricted and to mandate inflated fares. Can’t see that being a winner with the public, can you? The cabbies might be happy but no one else will be and TfL will be “in the dock” for wrecking the minicab business and making pensioners and the frail pay vastly more to go to the shops or hospital.
@Theban
“There are essential two fundamental fare models:
1. A fare calcukated from actual distance travelled and journey duration (let’s call it dynamic fares).
2. A fare based on a book on the cost to travel from various places to other places (zones) regardless of actual distance travelled or journey duration (let’s call it fixed fares).”
…..and one of the reasons I dislike using black cabs is precisely because they use model 1, which means you never know what you’re going to have to pay until you get there and the meter stops.
@Theban
There are not two different ways to calculate fares. There is one, simple, clear, one: pure distance, modified, as you say, to taste with complicating factors like time of day.
Zonal fares are just like distance fares, but with artificial unfairnesses thrown in (a 500m journey could be in 1, 2 or 3 zones, with resulting different prices). Its only possible benefit might be in ease of manual calculation, but this is probably not important these days. It might be one way to give black cabs a built-in advantage, but it is not the only one, and unjustified built-in advantages are anyway bound to be seen, probably rightly, as protectionism or state aid.
If black cabs are to be given any kind of legal special protection, it has to be linked to their known and accepted benefits (access, knowledge, even perhaps tradition) rather than to an arbitrary strange restrictions on others’ prices. Otherwise such a law will not be passed, nor should it be.
Why calculate fares by distance? Why not do it by time given that almost certainly the most expensive parts of the cost are labour and capital investment for the cab? Other factors like insurance are also more logically done by time. We pay for our car insurance by the year, not for x miles.
@theban – time is money, whether the time is spent standing still or on the move and – because they don’t charge by the meter -minicab operators will factor into their prices the risk that they may be stationary for a while . Ofcourse,they are effectively taking an average view – a bet therefore – whereas the black taxi can charge you according to actual conditions.
I hire a car (to drive myself) I pay by the day, not the mile. And when I use a skilled worker like a plumber, again he is paid by the hour, not on piecework.
There are distance-related costs, of course, I think fuel is a relatively small part of the cost of a taxi fare. (If it wasn’t, cabbies wouldn’t leave their engines running on the ranks)
@timbeau – not to mention mileage-related maintenance costs, presumably
Car share services like Zipcar are also paid per hour with a mileage allowance and a price per mile if you exceed this. Fuel is factored into the price. The car comes with a fuel card and the driver is required to top the car up if the tank is less than a quarter full at the end of the hire.
I think it may have been mentioned previously, but in the US, Uber are trialling a variant of their service called “UberPool” which is, in effect, an introduction service for car pooling. So the driver isn’t a licensed taxi driver but is taking a particular journey and is happy to give a lift to someone who wants to go the same way and get some money towards their costs. The information about the route, driver, passenger, introductions and charging done by Uber, of course.
@WW
Anyone, in fact, can promote a private Bill in Parliament, but:
– Parliament must accept it and they will not accept anything which can be achieved in any other way
– it is expensive and slow
– the process is more complex than for a Government Bill as it offers anyone the chance to object (not just members of Parliament) and requires a select committee to hear objections in each House. There is no whipping, either, so it can be up to the inclinations of individual MPs or Peers as to whether they would support, oppose or ignore such a Bill.
So, getting any measures as a Government Bill is much better as it is faster and more reliable.
Having said that, a private Bill can cover areas that the Government hasn’t time for or which aren’t a priority for Parliamentary time. Having promoted half a dozen private Bills (including two which were opposed (unsuccessfully) by the Government of the day), it’s also good fun and can produce some important outcomes.
A propos my previous comment, I should have added, perhaps, that my private Bill experience also included two failed attempts to regulate pedicabs, both of which were strenuously opposed by both the taxi trade (who wanted pedicabs off the road entirely and so opposed any form of regulation) and the pedicab trade (who opposed nay form of regulation, per se).
@Quinlet
“Anyone, in fact, can promote a private Bill in Parliament, but:
…
– it is expensive and slow”
Olympia & York underwrote the £2.5m cost of the private Bill for the JLE in 1989. It went through quickly however as they had the direct link to and full backing of the Prime Minister of the day, Maggie. Funding the extension however, wasn’t nearly so easy for O&Y…
This will be explained in full in the Fleet/Jubilee Tube Part 2 article, coming to LR this summer!
Reynolds 953
I think that an “Uber pool” arrangement in this country would probably invalidate yout motor Insurance policy?
Quinlet
Interesting.
[ Incidentally, I would love to see
pedicabsRickshaws banned ]Of course, before 1948, most major railway companies regularly presented private bills to Parliament, & BR did so as well, though I’m unsure as to the various BR bill’s status – perhaps you can enlighten us – were they “private” or “government” proposed legislation?
Greg,
Neither (or both). They were hybrid bills.
@Greg
BR bills were normally private Bills. Hybrid Bills occur when the Bill has some aspects of a private Bill, that is, had an impact only on certain defined classes of the public, but other aspects which affect the public in general. There is a preference for hybrid bills for big infrastructure projects because although they have to go through both the private and public bill processes (ie, allow for objections and have select committees) the government can whip and manage the timetable much better. Both the Channel Tunnel Bill and the Crossrail Bill were hybrid, but in the former case some strenuous effort had to be made to make it hybrid, IIRC this was by including the widening of the M20 in it. Widening of the A2 also made the HS1 Bill hybrid.
Quinlet, Greg,
Back to the question asked. I may be wrong but I thought private railway bills were generally hybrid bills because, in practice Parliament had to chose which railway the scheme to back from the multitude proposed. So there was a public interest – not least because of a requirement to make sure the thing actually got built (or the company relinquish the plans and let some other scheme go ahead) for the public benefit.
One scheme involving Bank station required the public subways to be built as part of the station construction so that would have made it a hybrid bill. In practice I suspect there were always issues like this which would make railway schemes hybrid as public land was almost bound to be involved.
@Pedantic
No they weren’t Hybrid Bills.
They were private bills unless public interest matters arose. Recent Hybrid Bills have included Channel Tunnel, CTRL, and HS2 Phase 1. However the bulk of BRB and LT Bills were privately-sponsored legislation, for example Jubilee Line Extension, DLR line schemes such as Lewisham, Croydon Tramlink (which was jointly promoted by LT and Croydon Council). Same for previous private railway legislation before 1948.
There is one distinction, that under the prevailing rules limiting the activities of a nationalised industry, LT and probably BRB needed permission from the DfT or equivalent to submit a private bill. Thus the DLR Lewisham extension (a bill that I was involved in) was delayed by a year because the DTp of the day hadn’t been convinced adequately about its merits. It was only submitted in 1989, whereas a bill had been drafted for introduction in 1988.
Interestingly a BRB (London) Bill of around 1990 was ‘talked out’ in the House of Commons. It sought to re-establish links between the GN line and the Thameslink route – well ahead of the Canal Junction route of today, but various Scots MPs were objecting simultaneously to InterCity’s proposed withdrawal of sleeper services via the East Coast. I think it was the Borders MP Alan Beith (who used Berwick station) who filibustered about the Bill, making his speech relevant by discussing the scope for sleepers to continue south of Kings Cross to places such as Blackfriars etc! In due course a deal was done, that Berwick passengers could travel at no extra charge via Edinburgh off the proposed Euston sleeper…
Generally private bills were discarded once TWOs (Transport & Works Orders) became possible under the provisions of the 1992 Transport & Works Act. The simplistic reason for that was because Parliament had become bored acting as a Westminster equivalent of a highway inquiry. It was also less of a deterrent to the public to run a railway inquiry equivalent. Nowadays there is also a DCO (Development Control Order) available for lesser matters, and also a mechanism for major national infrastructure scheme processes – but I’m unconvinced that the national option would give the same legal cover against claims about railway operational nuisance etc that a Hybrid Bill or TWO would confer.
And the legislation is different in Scotland, just for the record!
@Quinlet – From a Government point of view,the risk is the other way round – that a public Bill slips into hybridity. In fact, Ministers and Bill managers prefer Bills not to be hybrid, just because of the risk of petitioning, which can be a major source of delay. You can’t whip the petitioners (except perhaps in a physical sense!)
@Greg Tingey – When I was a student I worked in a factory during the summer and there was a notice board that people used for offers of lifts from particular locations. I took advantage of this and chipped in some petrol money for the driver.
“Uber Pool” seems to be a high tech version of the notice board. I don’t know what the fine print of car insurance policies would say about it these days as I no longer own a car.
PoP
You have restricted yourself to the “Proposal” stage of any railway bill.
I didn’t.
Most of the big pre-Grouping companies proposed new bills at various points in their lives. E.G. The elctrification of Liverpool (Exchange) to Southport, etc …
Now what?
Jonathon Roberts
Thanks for that – I thought that what you stated was the case, but was not entirely sure.
Another good article, but with a typo – “Uber’s methods do not equate to a taximeter in all name” should presumably include a “but”? [It should. Now fixed. Malcolm]
@Reynolds 953
I would guess “hire or reward” exclusions don’t prevent you chipping in for a share of the actual costs (petrol money). It wold only start to be a problem if the driver actually had more money (plus money’s worth of petrol) at the end of the journey than he started with.
It is surely legal for a passenger to pay for a toll/petrol/parking? And what if the owner isn’t driving? Who pays then?
@timbeau – whenever I have a limo from the airport, I always have to pay for any parking charges they incurred whilst waiting for me to emerge from the arrivals side.
@Reynolds 953 -with informal sharing, sometimes the initial hirer can end up well in pocket from sharers’ contributions. (Once offered – and accepted – a bottle of champagne from a sharer after i took the last cab off the rank outside my local station…) Legal or not, both parties – and the cabby – were all satisfied.
Today I saw a licensed taxi cause quite a jam in South Kensington trying to execute a u-turn in a daft place. I was reminded of how often I have witnessed such anti-social driving, and I assume many other Londoners have seen similar.
This may matter because in a dispute with a political dimension it helps to have the public on ones side.
I realise that a legal decision in California won’t apply to London, but this does seem like an unexpected blow to the Uber business model.
(Summary – Uber drivers are employees, not independent contractors)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/17/us-uber-california-idUSKBN0OX1TE20150617
Interesting debate however my position is that I don’t believe black cabs should have a monopoly and as BJ has said …it’s down to consumer choice.
I don’t personally have any loyalty to black cabs …although I want to be safe with a cabbie. However my husband & I have had cause to contact TFL and complain about official black cab’s in the past. In the days of smoking and not that long ago …a black cab was filled with (pipe) smoke and we didn’t want to take the journey with him. The next cabbie in the queue would not take us and was busy reading his paper!
That is a crap and abysmal way to treat customers. My concern is to have good, safe, professional and respectful cab drivers …that’s what’s important for me. The colour of the cab is irrelevant to me.
Black cabs don’t have a monopoly. They are licensed to ply for hire, having passed “the knowledge”.
Minicabs on the other hand, have to be pre-booked.
It really is as simple as that.
To me the Black Cab trade is firmly stuck in the past century. It is very difficult to grab one outside Central London or the airports (even with apps it is usually much faster to book Uber or a minicab as there simply are more cars available), and almost none of them have felt compelled to give up that 2% of their profit to install a card reader when hardly anyone ever carries more than £20-30 in cash.
To my mind there should be just one type of licence which would allow vehicles to be hailed or booked by whatever means possible. The requirements should – to my mind – be somewhere between those for a black cab and those for a minicab, i.e.
– Uniform and instantly recognizable vehicles, although there could be different classes of vehicle specification (bear in mind luxury limousines operate on the same minicab licence as all other ones)
– Specified tariffs for different classes of vehicle
– Fit and proper person requirements, but nothing as onerous as the Knowledge test which – to my mind – is superfluous in the Google maps and sat-nav era
@straphan -indeed – you will have noticed that no one has been able to answer my earlier question: “When did you last hail a cab in Ealing Broadway (to pick a major non-zone 1 traffic location)? Outside central London, it’s a choice between finding a rank or pre-booking. Given the rarity of suburban cab ranks, that choice is largely theoretical.
@Graham H: Indeed, which is why in this day and age where most people have a phone capable of doing something more than just calling in their pocket I see the distinction between waving a hand and tapping the screen as rather academic.
I fully understand that black cabbies have had to invest a lot of time, effort and money into their business, but I do not see the point of them having to be a distinct group anymore.
@Alan Griffiths
“Black cabs don’t have a monopoly. They are licensed to ply for hire”
They have a monopoly on plying for hire. But in the age of Uber, “pre-booked” can mean ten seconds ago, so it’s not much of one.
Having a specialism puts you at an advantage only whilst there is a demand for that specialism. Like it or not, Strowger presaged the end of telephone operators, Rudolf Diesel spelt the end of the LGOC’s stable lads, (not to mention my grandfather’s career as a steam lorry driver), Oyster spelt the end of bus conductors, and Tom-Tom has now made “the Knowledge” an obsolete skill as well.
Being the only dinosaur able to kill a triceratops is great, until the triceratops evolve into something else.
@Strahan. Don’t forget accessibility requirements in your new unified world of taxis. I travel through Southampton Central station frequently and it’s very noticeable there that the only licencing requirement for cabs using the rank there is that they are painted white! It is a total lottery as to whether there is a wheelchair accessible cab available when a passenger needs one. In a swift glance last week, I counted only one out of about fifteen at the station. Sorry to go beyond London for my comment, but at least in the big city, accessible taxis are universal.
@Fandroid: Naturally, that should be one of the requirements for at least some of the classes of vehicle (it’s tough to make an S-Class Mercedes wheelchair accessible…).
@straphan – No, I was agreeing with you! Before I read this thread, the cab trade wasn’t something I had considered in any depth, being content to wave at one in central London and visit the rank at Godalming station, being the two places I most needed one; trips to the airport were always pre-booked. Now I have seen the arguments, I cannot for the life of me see the logical difference between a black cab and an Uber cab (or equivalent). Nor can I see any logical breakpoint in the types of regulation (safety, quality etc) which makes it undesirable to apply the full palette of regulation to all classes of hired vehicle. Yes, it would be a pity for those of us who aren’t allowed to play with smart phones if cabs ceased to ply for hire in central London, and yes, I feel sorry for cabbies who have invested considerable time and money in their trade, but I really can’t see how the plying for hire distinction can be sustained.
@Graham H: I do agree with you as well – my comment wasn’t intended to come across as aimed against you by any means.
My only point is that there is no reason why you should not be able to hire any kind of taxi by any possible means – be it phone, app or waving a hand.
I also agree that this would hit black cabbies most, and that probably some compensation would be in order for their expenditure, but I still don’t think the way the system works today makes sense for the customer.
Re Staphan 19 June 2015 at 15:19
It appears that TfL are having the same thoughts as you!
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/bank-cards-could-soon-be-accepted-on-all-black-taxis-in-london-10331802.html
Detail on TfL proposed changes on paying for Black Cabs here:
https://www.tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2015/major-change-to-taxi-fare-payments-moves-a-step-closer
Consultation responses here if you want to:
https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/taxis/card-payment
Key points:
“Currently there isn’t a requirement for taxis to accept card payments, and only around half of drivers do, despite a recent survey suggesting that 83% of passengers would like to be able to pay by card.”
“The consultation also asks if contactless payments, both with cards and other payment methods, should be accepted in all taxis. The current contactless card payment limit is £20, but this will increase to £30 in September 2015 – which would allow passengers to pay for most journeys, with the average taxi fare being £19.50*.”
*Average distance is 3miles though the average fare and distance wouldn’t be directly comparable.
I have recently been in the US for business, and in the particular city I was based in, I was amazed at the lack of knowledge of the taxi drivers – it has given me a bit more respect for the ‘knowledge’ of London’s black cab drivers.
Handing a GPS to your customer and telling them to type in the destination address should not be part of the taxi journey.
I think I’ve got a simple solution to settle this matter.
Require minicabs to agree the fare before the journey, based on predicted duration and distance. Any vehicle charging based on actual duration and distance should have to use an approved taximeter charging a standard rate.
Any argument about whether it’s physically connected to the wheels or not is entirely arbitrary.
@ChrisMitch: Given the ubiquity of portable devices capable of guiding someone to a destination (be it sat-navs, smart phones, tablets) as well as their relatively low cost, I believe they should become part of the basic requirements for any taxi/minicab regulation.
@Andy Brice: Correct me if I’m wrong but according to the law isn’t it already the case that you have to agree the fare before commencing the journey in a public hire vehicle (minicab)?
Not at all scientific but the Daily Politics have done their “mood box” on the question of Black Cabs vs Uber. It was conducted outside Charing Cross station and people passing by are asked to pick their preferred option by placing a yellow ball in the appropriate part of the box (for those who may not have seen the show before). Interestingly there was quite a high level of response with Black Cabs just winning out. Younger people voted more strongly for Uber suggesting a future market threat. There then followed a studio discussion with Peter Stringfellow (strongly supports Black Cabs) and Ivan Massow (potential Mayoral candidate for the Tories) who was more “flexible” in his views. It was quite interesting that Mr Stringfellow was pretty well informed on the topic and is apparently seeing Isabel Dedring on the matter. The discussion was towards the end of the show and will be on I-Player later.
Current story in the Evening Standard: “London Uber drivers to face English and ‘Knowledge-lite’ style geography tests”. This has been announced by the Mayor. Link here to article: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-uber-drivers-to-face-english-and-knowledgelite-style-geography-tests-10341331.html
Two very interesting letters in yesterday’s Standard
The first stating that there is a potentially dangerous race to the bottom, with far too many “minicabs” & the second explaining why some Black-Cabbies are reluctant to take credit-card payments – the card companies are greedy exploiters, basically.
@Greg Tingey:
Looking at Barclaycard’s pricing schedule for card terminals I think the cabbie quoting a 12.5% cut per card transaction seems to have pushed the decimal point by one spot:
http://www.barclays.co.uk/Cardsandpayments/Acceptingcardpayments/P1242558531141
The price is £15/month plus 1.25% cut of transactions. Is that really your definition of ‘greedy exploitation’?
[Good point. It does not appear that black cabs pay more than any other business for credit card services. Unless this can be disproven, however, we will close off any further debate and discussion on credit card rates. LBM]
Given that black cabs offer a premium (well, sort of) service compared to minicabs and uber, it’s hardly surprising that – all other things being equal – the public prefer them. However, as a premium service they also charge a (quite considerable) premium rate. No surprise there, then. But it really escapes me why there is such reluctance to allow the market to work with suggestions of limits to the numbers of minicabs, and why there is the thought that customers should, in some way, be forced to use the premium service. Provided quality standards are maintained in minicabs and uber (and that’s the challenge for the Public Carriage Office) let the market rule!
I completely agree with those saying that we should have a single regulatory system applying to all taxi, minicab, or Uber-style privateers. We must focus on the policy objectives of regulation, and try to achieve those cost-effectively, taking advantage of efficiencies that technology may have enabled.
The major areas of market intervention required would seem to be:
1. Driver “fit and proper” person test
2. Vehicle safety
3. Disabled access
4. Congestion issues, including parking while awaiting trade, use of ranks etc.
5. Emissions
Perhaps some of these can be dealt with by varable tariffs. For example, an explicit tax could be levied on all journeys in vehicles that are not accessible to the disabled, which could be passed on as a subsidy to those operating accessible vehicles. The supply of such vehicles could be directly monitored by a company such as Uber (or a regulator with access to its data), and theoretically the tariff could be adjusted to match supply with demand over some period.
A similar thing could be attempted with a congestion tariff, emissions and so on. If individual drivers were obliged to supply location data of their vehicles to a regulated operator for at least an hour prior to announcing their availability for hire, they could potentially be charged just for being somewhere.
Looks like TfL are having a tough time this morning in front of the Transport Commitee on taxi and private hire matters. Lots of applause for the Committee members and grumbling and “noise” for Mssrs Daniels, Emmerson and Dedring.
In closing out the taxi session Val Shawcross, Committee Chair, says she was very disappointed in the lack of progress and commitment from TfL and the unpreparedness of some witnesses. Also said “TfL is now “cosy & flabby to the point of unprofessionalism” regarding its dealings with Uber” – mega ouch. There will be “no breathing space” on these issues until TfL sorts itself out. Very political “slap round the chops” for TfL and clearly playing to the gallery which was full of taxi drivers.
There is a documentary on the Knowledge available on iplayer as part of the BBC4 London Collection; Modern Times: Streetwise. Though no doubt some things have changed, not least because the Knowledge is now administered by TfL, rather than the Met, as it was in 1996 when the documentary was made, it does give some insights into the culture of taxi driving and why black cab drivers are so vociferous in defence of the position they have attained,
Last week, I sat opposite an advertisement for Gett, which appeared to be the black cab trade’s answer to Ueber. Does anyone know how it operates? .
As far as I understand it is an app for black cab only, which lets you request and pay for a black cab (using a pre-registered debit/credit card). Apparently there are no user fees (you pay what the meter says), which means the app shares the profit with the drivers.
I’m just a punter that would use black cabs far more often if you could pay by card and if receipts were proper printed ones.
Too often i have got in a cab only to be told ‘the machine’s not working’. A friend of mine suggests this is a lie and that cabbies just prefer cash so as to avoid tax. I’m not informed enough to say if this is right or wrong.
It is not good enough to say ‘we can stop by a cashpoint if you like’. For my expenses, I have a card and withdrawing the cash, reconciling the change with the accounts dept etc is a tiresome bore.
Sometimes when I ask for a receipt, I have been handed a scribbled note with no reference to the time, duration or location of the journey, meaning i have to take the time to note down these details myself for future reference. Sometimes I’ve been given a wadge of five or more blank receipts, the presumption being that i am keen to defraud my boss of some expenses. This is crazy behaviour and suggests a culture of everyone ripping each other off.
Uber is attractive to me because it is more accomodating on the issues above, but the experience lacks so much of what black cabs can offer.
And what is the USP that cabbies can actually offer? Not their route knowledge, That’s rendered almost completely worthless by gps etc. Not their general London knowledge either since the punter in the back almost certainly has a smartphone with access to a world of information far greater than any individual drivers’.
So what then? For me it is the experience of rushing to the edge of the pavement, raising your arm and waving to the approaching orange light and stepping in through the door that opens the wrong way into a haven of comfort and security. It is a feeling of luxury that Uber cannot touch and never will. This is what cabbies should focus on: make the experience even better. Free, chilled bottles of water, phone chargers ready to go, a newspaper, etc. contactless card payment, detailed receipts with start and end points. There are dozes of small changes that cabbies could make to stand out from Uber even further.
If they don’t, black cabs will become a kind of overpriced nostalgic heritage experience.
“Sorry mate, card machine’s not working”
“ok, next time i’ll just take Uber”
Black cab drivers
– untrustworthy
– rude
– racist
All of them in one driver? Unlucky. 1-2 of those characteristics? yeah well thats more often the case. I don’t see why I need to be made to feel like they’re doing me a favour as well as playing the which undesirable-blackcab-characteristic-will-I-get-bingo.
That’s unfair there are some nice ones but they’re far and few between.
@anonymous
“stepping in through the door that opens the wrong way ”
rear-hinged doors actually went out when the Fairway/FX4 was replaced by the TX1 in 1997. AS there is now a fifteen year age limit on London taxis, it is very rare to see a Fairway in use now.
Why would the mayor support the interests of 20,000 black cab drivers versus over 1,000,000 Londoners (and this isn’t counting the tourists who arrive with the app).
The first black cab drivers didn’t care about the coachmen and grooms who they replaced. And Google’s driverless taxis won’t care about replacing the current Uber drivers.
As a Londoner I love the choice that Uber and other apps bring as a welcome replacement to the rude and entitled Black cab drivers.
It was fascinating to reread this article in the new magazine, and reflect on the various contradictions in the debate (not in the measured and balanced article). I started wondering how this debate would work if the industry were different. There have been lots of roles or trades rendered obsolete by technology. Yet I can see a similar debate a long time ago between lamplighters (instead of the black cab trade) and electric street lights (Uber).
However, for taxis, I do think that there is a clear need strategically to work out what is needed in London, both in the central area and in the suburbs. Should the market decide with regulation solely on the current arrangements? Or should there be more extensive regulation to protect the key attributes of the black cab? Whatever the decision and I will offer my opinion in a moment, it is not for TfL to fix this; it is for the Mayor/GLA to determine what they want (and get the legislation in place). Perhaps this might include asking TfL to manage a proper study that might involve all interested parties.
My opinion is that Uber has been a game changer and as a result the industry has changed for good. It is no good trying to emulate King Canute! Addison Lee had the right idea with quality. Combining all the best features of all the different taxi types seems to me to be the thing to do. It also seems to me that the traditional black cab hail and ride can only work in the parts of London, mainly the central area, where there are enough cabs to ensure that waiting times are short.
@100andthirty
I’m not sure it’s a question of black cabs being old fashioned (like lamplighters) but that they haven’t sorted out their place in the market. They charge a premium price, compared to minicabs and Uber, but don’t really provide a premium service. If black cabs upped their game and built on their inherent advantage of being able to be hailed in the street, rather than trying to defend outdated approaches (like the knowledge) they would be in a much stronger position.
It’s not just their hail-on-street facility, where we think of flagging down one that is on the move, that’s precious, it’s the Black Cab’s ability to wait and to rank up either informally at business opportunities and times known to individuals or groups of cabbies, or at designated stands. Often when finding a cab in any town or city it is best to walk towards such a location (station, town square) where you know many drivers will be heading in the knowledge that if they don’t pick-up en route they’ll be able to wait their turn in a queue for a (hopefully) guaranteed fare. Whilst minicabs can have a central office like this their drivers clearly can’t casually pick-up en route whilst they are all congregating around the office for their next bookings. Those hailing and ranking priveleges are worth preserving. By comparison, concern about whether minicabs use taximeters, whether a separate device connected to a wheel tacho or built into a phone using GPS, or worked out on a central server, or with a bit of string on a map in a minicab office and communicated by phone is practically meaningless. There’s nothing to stop black cabs also operating under Ueber or any other private hire minicab service to pick up additional journeys between suburbs and from suburb back to centre rather than just mechanically returning to hub ranks, if, and clearly only if, the individual drivers feel they’re not picking up enough ad-hock hails on their runs back to those hubs.
Once you’re esconced in deepest suburbia, likely empty cab frequency is in most places too low to rely on hailing for the customer unless you’re prepared to walk perhaps a considerable distance to a major arterial road, so pickup bookings from current location is often going to be far more attractive, unless maybe you know the area very well (around your home maybe) and the nearest rank is a known, safe, attractive walk away, perhaps near local shops and entertainment. Either way there’s a vast market amongst those who currently use their own cars for non central journeys. Ueber could help to attract more private hire demand from those in the broader suburbs and that in turn could encourage more people to become car-free. That potentially creates more demand for conventional public transport journeys to the centre and other hubs where demand for black cabs may in turn be increased. The market may segment and evolve, but I think there will always be a niche for the iconic London hail-and-ride cab.
@Quinlet / 130 – I agree there is an issue here about determining the role of the black cab in the wider market for individual vehicle based transport. However even if the black cab repositions itself as a premium product I fear the size of that market segment will be much smaller than at present thus damaging the livelihoods of cabbies – one of their key complaints. The other problem is that people (the market) are voting with their wallets and phones – they see little downside in terms of convenience with Uber and the sheer scale of Uber’s presence means price is a key competitive weapon and taxis have no ability to compete on price “in real time” as the Mayor sets the tariff (via TfL).
The interesting wider question for the politicians – and especially on the right – is that what we’re seeing is competition and innovation attacking a regulated market. Normally they’re in favour of such things. However with the taxi trade they’re stuck with having to be seen to defend a regulated, protected business with relatively high barriers to entry in that trade. Even more ironically cabbies tend to be Tory voting / have views more aligned with the right and now we find them cheering Labour and Lib Dem Assembly members who’ve tried to find a way forward. Sometimes you can’t beat “real life” for throwing up some interesting paradoxes.
@WW
The irony of the politicians having to defend a regulated market with high barriers to entry is that the only significant group to demand this is the black cab drivers themselves. This leaves us with a producer led service which as, again, what politicians, particularly of the right, normally argue vociferously against. The consequence, if nothing changes, of course, is that the regulated sector will dwindle. Suburban black cabs are the most vulnerable to competition, so they will go first.
@ Quinlet – I don’t disagree with your broad analysis. Of course several prospective Mayoral candidates are cosying up to the taxi trade for obvious reasons. I do, however, feel that making rash promises to the taxi trade risks great disappointment in the future. No Mayor can control what consumers want to do in terms of the travel choices. I think none of the candidates will have access to the detailed advice that TfL holds so the risk of making undeliverable commitments is high. The same risk exists with regard to rash promises about cutting / freezing fares / making night buses “free for workers”. [rolls eyes]
quinlet/anonymous & WW
One: if the generalisations put up by anon were about cyclists, said post would probably have been removed – & anyway I Have not found the allegations to be substantive.
Two: A bout 6 years back we wanted the 07.00 of KGX for Edinburgh – ok – catch early vic-line (third train, I think) – the frst two went, but the next two were cancelled [ overunning engineering according to what we were told ]
We made out train with less than 6 minutes to spare, thanks to a black cab parked outside Walthamstow station.
No phone-up app or minicab firm could do that.
The “instant hail” has a place & is essential.
Agree that black-cabs need to raise their game to justify thir premium service, though, but that is not an argument for getting rid of them, is it?
@Greg Tingey
I certainly wasn’t arguing that we should ‘get rid of’ black cabs, but that, if they don’t up their game, they will just dwindle. Central London should be a good place to keep on seeing them for a few years, at any rate, but outside the centre I suspect that they will become fewer and fewer. After all, if your Walthamstow black cab driver had come on stand 10 minutes later or if somebody else had hailed him 10 minutes earlier, there would be only the slimmest chance of another one and you would have missed your train. Good luck is great and to be taken advantage of, but we can’t build a system around it. And while I wouldn’t actively ‘get rid of’ black cabs I certainly wouldn’t manipulate the market to keep them going artificially.
One point “Is London a democracy?” misses.
“The first black cab drivers didn’t care about the coachmen and grooms who they replaced.” is wrong. Coachmen and grooms were used by people who owned their own coaches, they weren’t in any sense public transport.
Given the way that Uber bump up their prices at any excuse – often to fares greater than black cabs – they are actually just a triumph of marketing over ability.
Interesting to note how “irritated” the Transport Committee were with TfL’s performance in front of them when discussing progress on all matters Taxi and Private Hire.
This letter to Isabel Dedring sums up their feelings rather pointedly.
Is taxi regulation the “ginger haired step-child” of TfL?
The people looking after tube, rail and buses have all those wonderful toys and their suppliers.
Even people looking after cycling have a newly found importance.
But taxis…? Moaning black cabbies, dodgy minicabs and faceless American virtual corporations… Is it an area that TfL’s “brightest and best” aspire to? 😉
@ Reynolds 953 – I think there has been a fair bit of change over the years as to who looks after Taxis and Private Hire within TfL. However I think the real problem is the one we’ve touched on a lot – huge technological change, changing customer needs and expectations, a long established trade with its own traditions and a legal framework that’s out of date. I think even if you had the brightest and sharpest operator in charge of that area we’d still be in broadly the same situation because you simply cannot satisfy the conflicting demands and expectations without someone believing they are losing out. Also TfL simply are not and cannot be in control of all of the factors listed. They inevitably face an element of “catching up” with things like Uber and smart technology.
Now I watched the webcast that the letter from Val Shawcross refers to. While it was never going to be a “calm” meeting given the tensions from various parties I don’t believe TfL acquitted themselves well. I’ve seen a whole spread of TfL bods sit in front of the Committee and I was astonished that those attending this time acted the way they did. The fact Ms Dedring clearly wasn’t supporting them either was both noticeable and not good. Normally it’s a bit of a “love in” between TfL and City Hall but not this time.
I am left wondering whether the concept of “Surface Transport” which is largely an operational and projects department is actually the best place for what is in part a “regulatory” role. There are always dangers when you restructure things but I suspect a separation of “regulator” from operator / projects might be the right thing to do. The role could remain in TfL but be properly resourced and have clear objectives of its own. It’d still be a hellish job but there might well be more focus and clarity.
It was cringeworthy to see basic failings like not keeping full and contemperaneous records of meetings and phone discussions being admitted to. That’s a “red rag” to people who have worked in local authorities and know all the strictures that apply. Heck it’s basic common sense for audit purposes if nothing else (as Val’s letter remarks). I’d have been “killed” (metaphorically) for that sort of failing in contract management so why the same expectations seemingly didn’t apply elsewhere I just don’t know.
I must admit, I find the bit about Uber having uninsured vehicles under their “control” very worrying & the apparent failure to do anything about it, even worse.
This is a disgraceful state of affairs, IMHO
TfL has always found it difficult to differentiate between its regulatory, policy and operational roles and, indeed, is not always clear about what a regulatory role entails. I certainly recall one conversation over the installation of 24 hour bus lanes, when I asked what would happen if there was a competition for space between a bus lane and loading bays for deliveries to adjacent shops. The reply of a TfL Director was that the bus lane would always win, thus clearly demonstrating a neglect of their responsibility to manage their roads with the needs of all users in mind.
@ quinlet – it would be “neglect” if the “bus lanes win” statement was just a statement without supporting analysis. If there was a methodology that was used to properly evaluate each case then fair enough. It’s likely that a bus, given the likely higher average passenger occupancy, would always generate more time savings / passenger benefits than for car or freight users. I do take your point though that you can’t just deprive whole sectors of their ability to function and support local economic activity.
@ww
My point was really that you can’t make a generic decision, especially on the road network, as each location will turn on its own merits. In this case, for example, how many shops and alternative locations for loading bays compared to how many buses.
London like many cities evolves, so should its institutions. I see the debate between Black Cabs and Uber as sibling rivalry. The former felt protected and safe from the vagaries of upstarts like Uber. Yet apart from adapting their vehicles, the rest of the Black Cab masoniclodgeesque fraternity went about their business as usual.
I have never ever met a Black Cab driver that was courteous kind or empathic towards their customers. Whereas the Uber drivers are happy, courteous and keen to ensure you have a stress free reasonably priced journey.
My main complaints are Black Cab drivers behaving omniscient in their aggressive manner as they make a U turn, or crawl along. (when empty or with a passenger) They refuse to accept you might know a short cut, and they in general talk incessantly regardless of any permission required. Of course the costs of waiting and indeed the journey itself are disproportionate, as opposed to the Uber estimate which invariably comes in within the lower and higher amount.
I firmly believe London Cabs should vastly improve, stop lobbying Assembly Members (do they get a reduction or free ride?) and offer customers a better taxi experience at a more cost effective price. Then they will compete on a level playing ground with Uber who also seem to provide a smooth ride in a nice smelling taxi for a very competive price for the Capital City of this United Kingdom!
“While it was never going to be a “calm” meeting given the tensions from various parties ”
And things seem to have got worse not better. Today’s meeting at City Hall suspended and police called because of disturbance. This is descending into farce.
According to the Standard, a City Hall official was knocked unconscious in a scuffle with taxi drivers as well.
The black cab drivers seem determined not to make any friends.
I can’t remember the last time I took a cab of any kind, but its important to state that the protests are not against uber alone, but the actions of many minicabs and unlicensed cabs, as most of the press including the Standard, are reporting its only uber they are against.
As a pedestrian and bus user I have some sympathy as dodgy cabs are increasingly parking where they shouldn’t (in bays and some terrible parking) blocking roads, and the numbers of them have been rising very quickly. In some places they’re causing big problems and blocking buses. The police and TfL seem to be doing little.
Who knows the details of todays incident, but on the subject of direct protesting – well its not about making friends but being noticed. UK cabbies seem some of the meekest in the world and have been walked over. In most other nations, protests are a lot more forthright, and they win concessions.
“…In most other nations, protests are a lot more forthright..”
Whereas in London if the black cabs protested by driving along in a line blocking the street no one would notice the difference… 😉
@SL 1980:
“UK cabbies seem some of the meekest in the world…”
Wha-?
“I can’t remember the last time I took a cab of any kind…”
Ah. Mystery solved.
I have used black cabs in London for over forty years. I have used similar licensed services elsewhere in the UK and overseas. With literally a couple of exceptions the black cab drivers have been polite, knowledgeable about the best routes and helpful – and head and shoulders above their counterparts elsewhere. So I don’t buy Uber excited’s views. I am sure black cabs could improve – every transport service can. But I would like to see a level playing field, particularly on such matters as route knowledge (live by satnav, die by satnav) and vehicle inspection and maintenance.
UK black cab drivers are very mild when you see how protests have gone abroad. Sitting around in a cab for an hour or two blocking a road at lunch has generally been it.
Judging by the reports as passed on in “Londonist”/Evening Standard, etc …
Boris called the Black-Cabbies “Luddites”.[Snip. PoP]
Which was & is not helpful at all.
It is the mayor’s & TfL’s legal duty to regulate public transport services within the capital.
As regards taxi services, of any & all sorts, they have signally failed to execute their bounden duty, which is a gross abdication of responsiblity, IMHO.
Declaration of interest: I take a black can about 3 times every 2 years, but since about 1969, I have only even had one “bad” experience. Private hire – about once a year & in the past, not so good. More recently, since TfL actually did do something about minicabs, they seem as good as the Black ones ….
As for “Uber” – sorry, there should be a “level field” & Boris’ prejudices are not relevant – they need careful control & licensing & this, apparently, is not happening.
Please correct me as to errors of fact, only?
[Interesting you only want to be corrected as to errors of fact. Do this mean you expect to be allowed to post opinions and not have them challenged? I deleted the worst case and a lot of the rest of the stuff was borderline. PoP]
Re Greg,
I believe the “Luddite” comment was to do with the introduction of ELECTRIC Taxis which was being discussed at the time (not minicabs, internet booking, vehicle safety or driver checks…)
If the “Luddite” comment was about electric cabs then Boris really does have a nerve. TFL’s record on the electric cab project (Nissan threw their corporate hands up and walked away) is poor and many the installed electric charging points in London don’t work.
@ IslandDweller
You’re probably referring to the article in the Telegraph last year or similar. ‘Many’ is a somewhat poorly defined word but it looks like things have improved according to the sourced website map which shows all operational & non-operational points.
The proposals include a minimum five-minute wait time between ordering a private hire vehicle and it arriving, and banning operators from showing cars for hire within a smartphone app – a hallmark of the American company’s service.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11899018/Uber-faces-massive-crackdown-in-London.html
Uber have pre-empted the rumoured TfL consultation with this petition:
https://action.uber.org/tfl/
I’ll wait and see what that consultation actually says and if it is a rational approach to regulation. However if it is proposing a compulsory 5 minute wait before getting an Uber cab, that seems like something purely done to appease black cabs rather than something that will improve service to the customer.
… and the TfL consultation on Private Hire Regulations Review is now available:
https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/tph/private-hire-proposals
The ‘five minutes’ proposal is explained as follows in the consultation:
“A delay between the booking and commencement of a journey will further reduce the
risk of a customer getting into the wrong car and/or into an unlicensed vehicle. It will
also enable the driver to ensure the passenger is in a safe pick-up location, i.e. not
having to run out into traffic to get into the vehicle. A short time period will give more
certainty that the driver and vehicle information has been successfully sent, delivered
and read by the passenger, and that the driver has had sufficient time to plan an
appropriate route.”
@ CG – the justification for the 5 minute delay sounds somewhat weak to me.
I’m not sure what is meant by “commencement of the journey”. Does that mean that the passenger can get into the taxi, but the driver isn’t permitted to set off until 5 minutes after the booking? Or does the driver leave the passenger waiting outside their car until the 5 minutes is up?
The Uber app provides the registration and photo of the vehicle along with a photo of the driver and a GPS trace of where the car is, so I think that is a pretty good information about the correct car.
The passenger and driver will need to take care how the passenger gets into the vehicle whether the taxi turns up after 1 minute or 1 hour.
This particular point looks like a bit of a sop to the cabbies…
The 5 minute delay does sound a little odd. Isn’t it an attempt to outlaw the practice (I’m thinking more of the massive fleet of black Ford Galaxys of one large operator rather than Uber) of unofficial ranks that appear outside certain City offices or at major events.
Now that the High Court has declared that smartphones are not taximeters it gives clear support for Uber’s position. Coupled with the Government’s position that there should be only light touch regulation it would seem that some of the more protectionist measures currently being consulted on would be unlikely to survive a JR, even if the Mayor decided to press ahead with them. The knee jerk reaction of the black cab trade always to try and prevent competition rather than facing up to it is unlikely to work on this occasion so that if they don’t make an effort to up their game, their future looks a bit bleaker.
[Just to be clear. JR in this context is Judicial Review and nothing to do with the person making the following comment. PoP]
Worth noting the views of the Institute of Directors, who are a good source of trade for taxis and uber alike, about the merits of innovation and user convenience: http://www.iod.com/influencing/press-office/press-releases/uber-ruling-a-victory-for-consumers-and-innovation .
This follows an earlier IoD press release on 30 September, in advance of the court action: http://www.iod.com/influencing/press-office/press-releases/heavy-handed-taxi-regulation-would-damage-london-reputation-for-innovation
While the IoD do some work for the constituency they claim to represent they are also an open free-market right-wing ideological pressure group. It would be interesting to know what the less ideologically partisan CBI think.
New TX5 cab design shown
Electric drivetrain, powered by .. (?)
…..powered by internal combustion. But it’s high time hybrid technology was introduced to taxis – the stop-start motoring that is the daily lot of a taxi is ideal for hybrids.
Timbeau
Yes, but the specification was (deliberately?) unclear as to the type of small “oil engine” that was going to be used – petrol, diesel, “paraffin”? Or what?
Beware artists’ impressions – these pictures of the TX5 from six months ago are significantly different from the latest one – and indeed each other
http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motor-shows/geely-makes-london-taxi
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e6cf2464-d3ca-11e4-a9d3-00144feab7de.html#axzz3pWkTBpLP
mercifully we have been spared this one from Nissan
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02782/Nissan-taxi-front_2782355b.jpg
which was toned down a bit
http://i2.birminghampost.co.uk/incoming/article8909263.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Nissan-taxi.jpg
before being shelved altogether
timbeau
Thanks – I see the “FT” article says “small petrol engine” – presumably easier (now) to meet emissions standards with one of those (this week) ?
@Greg – the implication of your “(this week)” is that emission standards vary frequently and randomly. This is what the engine manufacturers would like us to believe, so that we can tolerate their pleas for “time to adapt to them”. Although of course the standards have changed, and diesel is now less favoured than it was, these changes, resulting from further discoveries about the relative severity of harmful effects, are actually quite slow, and can be measured in decades. So the move away from diesel towards petrol (which is in any case set about with many ifs, buts and howevers) is actually the flavour of the decade, rather than the flavour of the month.
Ultimately (in my view) humankind is going to have to shift to non-nuclear renewables, but it’s going to be a long slow process. Possibly too long and slow for the health of the climate.
Re Timbeau,
Electric Transmission – It implies hybrid is included the question is just how much energy storage (battery and possibly super capacitor) there is and how the system and software are configured, but I guess less comparative energy storage than the Boris buses (engine on fixed RPM or off) especially if using a petrol engine where variable rpm is less of an issue for efficiency.
In the space of a few years, the New York yellow cab fleet has been transformed from leviathans powered by gas-guzzler V8 engines to vehicles with a smaller petrol engine combined with battery (effectively following the Toyota Prius model). There are very few diesel vehicles on the streets of Manhattan. I was there a couple of weeks ago and the air quality felt noticeable better than London – despite gridlock in a couple of places.
As to the “emission standard this week” comment, the UK government has egg on its face here. They encouraged the move to diesel engined cars because of the lower exhaust CO2 levels (probably true even if the official figures – VW scandal – aren’t very representative) but didn’t consider the particulate issue – which is worse for diesels than petrols.
Further comment in terms of what sort of hybrid should a London taxi have. There is already large expertise in the motor industry for petrol-battery hybrid powertrains. All the big manufacturers (BMW Ford GM Mercedes Nissan Toyota VW group) already sell these (not necessarily in the UK). In contrast, a very small installed base for diesel-battery hybrids – only Citroen and Volvo offering these, with low sales volume.
@IslandDweller: Good points you make. As a matter of interest, I think I have read somewhere that trying to relate how dangerous particulates are to how bad the air quality “feels” can be misleading. The smelliest bits are not the same, nor even closely correlated with, the killingest bits. But I don’t know how authoritative this claim is, and I have the feeling it came from a newspaper not well-known for 100% accuracy. (The same source also asserted that gauze masks are worse than useless, as the particulates get through the holes, but the user feels protected and thus takes less care to get out of the way of the fumes).
@Island Dweller
“There are very few diesel vehicles on the streets of Manhattan.”
America never went for diesel passenger cars in the way that Europe did – lower prices for fuel over there meant that economy was never as big an issue there.
“[UK Gov’t] encouraged the move to diesel engined cars because of the lower exhaust CO2 levels (probably true even if the official figures – VW scandal – aren’t very representative) ”
The VW scandal was actually about diesel NOx emissions, not CO2.
Euro 6 Diesel NOx standards are very stringent. I have a Euro 6 diesel car which puts out less NOx than the 5 year old petrol it replaced. With the added bonus that when stuck doing 50 to 60 on the M6 yesterday it was getting over 60mpg. I was very hesitant about diesel till Euro 6.
@Purley Dweller
The very lax testing regime in Europe has now shown that the statement that ‘a Euro 6 diesel car [] puts out less NOx than a 5 year old petrol car’ is debatable, to say the least. More recent, ‘real world’, tests have indicated that a modern diesel car can emit an order of magnitude more NOx than a bus or a lorry.
@Purley dweller
“I have a Euro 6 diesel car which puts out less NOx than the 5 year old petrol it replaced.” …………….under laboratory conditions, at least!
Re Timebau,
… and under the current drive cycle. (Diesel) NOx will be worse with change in engine RPM and acceleration which will happen more under the proposed new drive cycle.
BBC news technology programme Click this weekend featured city traffic pollution. Along with an alarming claim that NOx pollution in London’s Oxford Street is the highest in the world, there was an item looking at hydrogen cars which Toyota are pushing heavily with some new luxury models in limited production. Here is the BBC video and an article on the subject: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33005362
Perhaps in response to rival Tesla’s opening up of their intellectual property, Toyota have released many of their patents in hydrogen for licensing. They claim the main advantage is long range and quick refuel times and there’s “no need to plug in” (a phrase they also use in their latest conventional petrol hybrid technology TV adverts). Perhaps if there was actually any hydrogen fuelling infrastructure in place . . .
Leading proponent of battery technology, Tesla’s Elon Musk, has claimed hydrogen technology is “extremely silly”. Meanwhile here: http://tonyseba.com/toyota-vs-tesla-can-hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicles-compete-with-electric-vehicles/ author Tony Seba dismisses this latest effort by Toyota and a few other manufacturers as a last gasp of a failed and dying technology, explaining “Electric vehicles are at least three times more energy efficient than Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.” and “You need to build a multi-trillion dollar hydrogen delivery infrastructure”, whereas “Electric vehicles . . . have a ready infrastructure: the power grid”
Of course, the elephant in the room for EVs is range and the problem of slow charging when the battery does run out. This is being addressed with battery improvements and fast(er) charging infrastructure. Asked by the BBC, the boss of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, scoffs at the issue of “range anxiety” in battery electric vehicles. “Where is all the hydrogen infrastructure?” he asks. “It doesn’t exist, it still has to be built. Where is the electricity infrastructure? Everywhere!”.
Range anxiety is an issue clearly, but the fear has been stoked up beyond reason by petroleum industries, manufacturers and petrolhead motor journalists. Now, Tony Seba writes: “It makes sense for the fossil fuel industry to lobby for the hydrogen car because hydrogen is essentially a product line extension for them”. Oil can’t see much of an income from EV charging stations, so fast-refill hydrogen would be a reason for customers to continue visiting fuelling stations, indeed the only option as it’s unlikely you’d be able to make hydrogen or be allowed to store large amounts of it at home! Carlos Ghosn has it right I think. The hidden USP of EV is that slow charging is potentially available everywhere. All you need is an outdoor rated socket connected to a standard domestic or commercial power supply. EV users will learn to top up little and often wherever it’s available just as they do with their smartphones, so it’s only on the usually rare longer distance trips that range really becomes a practical concern rather than a fear.
For the TX5, EV with range extender is quoted, a hybrid configuration where the engine isn’t really big enough to power the car alone (with normal performance) so whilst it can supplement the battery for short periods of very high demand, it’s used more during lower demand to keep the battery charged. I worry this configuration could lead to vehicles at large ranks all sitting with their engines running to recharge and causing local air quality problems at those sites. At ranks at large stations or airports, some sort of plug-in recharging system would be an excellent idea as cabs often queue for long periods, but that’s difficult with a moving queue. There are sectioned ground power rail or plate systems available today that only switch on when there’s a vehicle above, but that is difficult and expensive. Low tech solution? Moving charging sockets deployed along a fixed power rail, just dragged by the vehicle charging cable as it moves along the rank, returned to the start using a chain drive! A smart version could even automatically control the vehicle as it shunts along the line allowing the driver to take a break out of the seat, being summoned back when his cab is near the front by a smartphone app alert.
Re MArk T,
” whereas “Electric vehicles . . . have a ready infrastructure: the power grid” ”
Except the power grid and generating capacity would need massive reinforcement to cope with the extra load created by recharging huge numbers of EVs. Digging up every pavement in the UK won’t be cheap but cheaper than Hydrogen…
Hydrogen only becomes cheap and efficient (ignoring distribution) if you get it from the S-I process using waste heat from potential 4th generation very high temperature gas (Helium) cooled reactors…
(So we’d better start digging up the pavements!)
@ngh
US utilities are not overly concerned about effects of EV charging on their networks even with their comparatively high take up of the technology: http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterdetwiler/2013/01/28/electric-cars-and-the-power-grid-how-are-they-coming-together/
Most UK recharging is slow using a standard 13A mains plug. For a typical car, it takes around 6-8 hours for a full charge with a power draw of around 3kW. That’s also within the capability of typical 4kW domestic solar arrays, so for around 6-8 hours of good daylight you could get a full charge for free. A good reason to leave the car at home and catch the bus on a sunny day?
Businesses could also have solar powered slow charge points associated with workplace parking with a full charge again being feasible again in ‘slow mode’ within a typical shift. Average daily car mileage in the UK is around 22 miles. EV range is approaching 4 times that on a full charge, so an average EV will need the equivalent of a quarter charge every day. A full charge would be 3kW x 8h = 24kWh. A quarter of that is 6kWh or two hours of that good sunlight on your solar array. Just as they use surplus nuclear and fossil energy in the 1970s overnight to pump-store ready for the peaks, many EVs could use new off-peak nuclear energy to charge up without overstressing the grid.
https://www.zap-map.com/charge-points/basics/
@mark Townend
“it’s only on the usually rare longer distance trips that range really becomes a practical concern rather than a fear.”
But a car that is only practical for, say 90% of the journeys it is needed for is not much use for those of us who only have the space for one car.
And the range that really matters for most city dwellers, who have to park on the street, is the range of the flex. As I write, my car is parked 100yards away from my house – and that’s a result as far as I’m concerned! Can you imagine what our streets would be like with dozens of electric cables snaking along the pavements and across the roads, constituting a trip hazard, and impeding wheelchairs and baby buggies alike? Not to mention the opportunity for theft, either of the cables themselves or the electricity flowing through them!
One plus though – you won’t need to remember where you parked the car – just follow the flex, Ariadne-like.
@Mark T
“For a typical car, it takes around 6-8 hours for a full charge. Average daily car mileage in the UK is around 22 miles. EV range is approaching 4 times that on a full charge.
So, assuming that when I’m not charging I can drive at an average of 60 mph, it will take me at least 7.5 hours to drive to anywhere further than Salisbury (90 miles), and more than a day to get to Cornwall. Not sold on the idea yet, I’m afraid
@timbeau
I fully understand your concern on the 10% of journeys where the range is inadequate, but if the price of the remaining 90% of electric motoring was so compelling, then short term hiring of another vehicle for the 10% could become popular and acceptable, and you might sometimes consider the train for longer journeys and perhaps hiring, taxiing or Uebering at the other end. The urban residential street with little or no allocated parking is a real problem I agree, a fundamental incompatibility. You might be lucky and be able to charge at a workplace normally, but the ability to do it at home is most important. The only answer would be widespread public charging points throughout such areas although the cost and disruption of doing that would be considerable. The charging bollards could have locked covers only accessible to the appropriate residential parking permit holders, where such schemes operate.
@timbeau, et al:
It is possible to charge batteries without plugging them into anything. Induction charging is already available for mobile phones, for example. The same technology could be used for charging cars parked alongside residential streets.
“But how do we pay for it?” Simple: EVs will have computers in them. They can read the induction plate’s ID number and send it to Central Charging Plc. (or whatever) to start the charging process. The vehicle’s own ID number is then used to bill the owner for the electricity they’ve used. It’ll still be at least an order of magnitude cheaper than petrol or diesel.
The biggest fly in the ointment here is LGVs. The energy needed by these vehicles is far greater than that needed by any car. Given that LGV drivers have legally mandated limits to how long they can drive for, I can see dedicated LGV charging / service stations appearing that will allow them to ‘fill up’ as they sleep, but this is still going to put a whopping load on the National Grid. Freight vehicles make up a large percentage of road users in cities like London.
I suspect we’ll probably see a mix. Using overhead power wires for LGVs isn’t a new idea, though as that photo suggests, it won’t look pretty in urban contexts. On busy dual carriageways and on motorways, however, I can see it catching on. In city centres, induction systems buried in the road would provide the power needed to trundle about at 30 mph. (The vehicle itself would keep track of power usage and supplier, so billing can be handled automatically.)
People may be interested to know that the Mayor and TfL have set out how taxis and private hire trades will be affected by the ULEZ.
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2015/mayor-and-tfl-finalise-ulez-requirements-for-taxi-and-minicab-trades
Haven’t read it in great detail but looks like a slice of cash is available to get older vehicles decommissioned and the fleet upgraded and zero emission capable.
From the TfL link in WW’s post:
@Mark T
The “90% of journeys are less than 5 miles” – or whatever today’s statistic is – is highly misleading. Somebody who does 9x 5-mile journeys and then one 200-mile journey would fulfil that criteria but 81% of their mileage would be on the long journey and only 19% on the 9 short ones put together. I use my car for short journeys because it’s there and convenient; the reason it’s there is because I need it for occasional longer journeys that are not possible, practical or economic to do any other way. The marginal cost of a 5-mile journey in an already owned, taxed, etc. car is so low that the economic drivers (sorry) for using something else will be very weak.
Assuming it’s feasible to have only one car, some form of range extension is needed – hey presto the plug-in hybrid. But is the benefit of having mains-derived electric traction for your short journeys worth the disbenefit of hauling several hundred kilos of batteries, motors, etc. around on the long journey that makes up the bulk of your miles?
“The answer to the lack of electric vehicle charging points is… lamp posts”
http://cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish/the-answer-to-the-lack-of-electric-vehicle-charging-points-is-lamp-posts/92804
These could be used in those urban residential streets. Potential savings in lighting energy available from LEDs and smart sensor based illumination rather than just leaving them on all night (more likely switching them all off completely after midnight to save money!).
@PurleyDweller and the economy of diesel engines. I agree they are still ahead but petrol engine technology is also making real leaps. I don’t own a car in London, but do rent when in other parts of the UK. The most recent petrol vehicle I had averaged over 50mpg (and not at milk float speed). Not as good as diesel, but the gap may be not as far apart as many suppose.
@Malcolm. Re your point that the most dangerous particulates may not be the ones you taste. Yes – agree. But it was still nice to be in a major city and not to encounter that sickly diesel smell that London has on some days.
@Moosealot
Yet EV sales continue to grow, and range continues to improve. The Tesla model S can do 240 to 286 Miles on a full charge, although that is exceptional at the moment and it is an expensive luxury car in the same market as top of the range BMWs and Mercs.
What may be important to you with your lifelong experience and expectation of motoring may not tally with what future urban dwellers will want. They may well be more prepared to compromise over range for their urban get around whilst being quite prepared to short term hire or use public transport for those longer trips. Car use has been falling steadily for years and an increasing number of urbanites are choosing not to have a car of their own at all, not least because some developments today are being deliberately planned as zero car with no residential parking places and no rights to street parking permits.
I think this general private EV discussion is getting a little too far away from the article subject for comfort so before we get snipped I think we’d better stop!
Island dweller – I agree about the petrol. To be honest it was the cost of purchase that swung it rather than the economy. I’d like something like a tesla really but would rather have a car that costs less than a mortgage. Charging wise there are electric charging points springing up at motorway services that charge the car much quicker 30th 60 minutes for 80%, which is a good stop time every 2 hours or so depending on battery size. Said tesla runs 250 miles so 3 hours should be possible between stops.
I think this general private EV discussion is getting a little too far away from the article subject for comfort so before we get snipped I think we’d better stop!
Yes. It was just about relevant to taxis especially bearing in mind the latest TfL press release regarding taxi and mini-cab emissions but I see a considerable danger of the discussion being more appropriate for Autocar magazine than London Reconnections.
PoP
Talking of which More on the new Black Cab from an auto-trade magazine (!)
Rereading this article I was reminded of one major disconnect in how the black cabs present themselves against reality. Namely the Knowledge primarily only covers a six mile radius in the centre but the black cabs present themselves as knowing the whole of London. That’s not helping endear them to users in the suburbs where many an anecdote tells of cabbies who don’t know the way, resort to satnavs and even get the passengers to direct them.
Public opinion has so far swung heavily behind Uber to the point that TfL’s latest proposals are seen by many as just protectionism rather than addressing real problems. A lot of anti-black cab people are from suburbs where they feel the taxis don’t serve them well – it’s hard to find them, they often don’t know where they’re going, some are reportedly reluctant to head to particular suburbs, and so many take cash only which is especially problematic in suburbs where accessible cashpoints are limited at night. Loyalty is a two way thing and many just don’t feel the black cabs have done enough to merit it.
And now a proposal, from London members of one political party to abolish or maybe downgrade “the knowledge”….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-35065681
@ Greg – which went down like an enormous lead balloon with taxi trade representatives and those poor souls who’ve just qualified after three years of slog. It’s quite interesting to see the Conservatives proposing to lower a barrier to entry to a trade that either in reality or just by reputation often votes Tory. To think they thought that Boris would be their friend. I wonder how those bidding to be the next Mayor will “play” the taxi trade and whether the trade will believe them? The only candidate with any kudos is Caroline Pidgeon by virtue of being a member of the Transport Committee that has brought a lot of the issues to the surface which has pleased the black cabbies a great deal.
@WW: It’s quite interesting to see the Conservatives proposing to lower a barrier to entry to a trade that either in reality or just by reputation often votes Tory
To be fair, the Conservatives would be acting entirely consistently with their free market ideology, and if they think that taxi drivers will vote for them anyway (maybe a second preference vote after UKIP), why bother pandering to them? Or to put it another way, in the eyes of a certain kind of Tory, isn’t the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association just another trade union wanting to maintain a restrictive practice?
There was an interestingly uninteresting debate in Parliament on black cabs involving both Zac Goldsmith and Sadiq Khan. Lots of pro-black cab rhetoric and platitudes, but both sitting firmly on the fence regarding any actual policy change.
Goldsmith:
I know that some within the black cab trade are calling for a mandatory five-minute period between booking and pick up to try to maintain the divide. I understand why that would work, and there is a strong case for it, but I worry that it would alienate—even infuriate—customers, who would not understand why it was happening. I understand that a similar mechanism has been brought in in New York, and there has been a considerable customer backlash there, which has been felt by the Mayor, who introduced the scheme, and whose popularity has been collapsing as a consequence
Khan:
Choice is important, but the job of parliamentarians, and of those who aspire to be the Mayor of London, is to make sure that there is proper regulation of those who run public transport—and I consider black cabs and private hire vehicles a form of public transport
The mayoral candidates emphasised the need for the government to Do Something, and the Transport Minister then came along to say that it was all an issue for TfL anyway.
@ Ian J – I agree that there is a philosophical consistency for some Tories to want to remove regulation from a market. However I thought, but was clearly wrong, that there was an unanimous view from the Assembly politicians to try to improve matters for the black cab trade. Dick Tracey, who appeared on the telly to support this proposal, is the Tory lead on the Transport Committee so he’s well aware of the issues and strength of feeling. Just feels a bit odd to me.
As for the candidates “sitting on the fence” well there’s a surprise (not)! Ironic that the minister says it’s a matter for TfL when I thought the consensus view was that some legislative change was required to sort out the mess. TfL can only go so far in the current set up.
I’m actually going to close comments on this. Not because I don’t think there’s some valid discussion still, but because there’ll be an taxi update post in a couple of days and it’ll sit better on that.