Since Uber’s launch in London in 2012, the app-based transportation company has been met with fierce opposition in some quarters, not least from the city’s black cab drivers.
This opposition came to a head recently, with a fresh protest by London taxi drivers in Central London on May 26th. Almost a thousand black cabs converged on Victoria to protest in the streets around Transport for London’s Central London headquarters. As well as blockading the streets, the Evening Standard reports that some cabbies went on foot to display anti-Uber placards. The protest caused widespread disruption, and resulted in police redirecting traffic away from the area.
Opposition to Uber
The taxi drivers were protesting against what they as unlicensed taxi cabs operating on their turf. One veteran taxi driver told the Standard that, “some of these drivers have been training for four years – it is quicker to become an RAF pilot than it is to become a cab driver. And yet TfL are not enforcing the law. Things are going to get a lot worse if nothing changes.”
Though Uber drivers are required to have taxi insurance and a private hire license which enables them to pick up and drop off according to a prior booking and for a set price, some, particularly black cab drivers argue that the way the service operates is in fact more akin to hackney cabs. With the customer ‘hailing’ an Uber vehicle via a dedicated smart phone app, which then works out the cost for the ride based on miles, distance plus a base fare, it’s easy to see the comparison.
Legally, black cab drivers are the only vehicle drivers permitted to use a taximeter, which would some would argue is what Uber’s app effectively is. They are also the only ones permitted to pick up adhoc passengers at the roadside or from a rank. But so far TfL has not taken any action over the matter, and black cab drivers are increasingly angry at what they see as the company’s flaunting of the rules and TfL’s failure to enforce licensing regulations.
Call for ban
Many are calling on London mayor Boris Johnson to revoke Uber’s license, to prevent the decline of the city’s black cab trade. At a recent question and answer session at City Hall, taxi drivers heckled Johnson, while members of the London Assembly challenged him to stand up to Uber.
In response, the Mayor said that with regards to banning Uber, there was, “nothing he would like to do more,” but that, “it would make no difference whatever… They’d go to a magistrate and be back on the roads tomorrow… Everywhere I go I see yellow lights on. I can see the business is dying and that grieves me. But it is very difficult to fight a huge change in consumer preference.”
TfL have recently announced plans to cap the number of new minicab licenses granted in London, but most taxi drivers feel that this does not go far enough, and they want Uber banned entirely.
This was not the first Uber-related protest by taxi drivers, with several taking place on Oxford Street last year, and it seems likely that it will not be the last if the present situation does not change.