THIS IS THE PRESS RELEASE FROM THE UNITED CABBIES GROUP THAT WENT OUT TO ALL MEDIA/NEWS AND NEWS SYNDICATORS (EG REUTERS etc) The United Cabbies Group Have called a protest on the 26th May 2015 at 14:00hrs on Victoria St SW1 at Windsor House (TfL HQ) We have called this second protest to continue awareness for the recent excellent GLA report “Future Proof” We do not want this report to slowly sink off the radar, so we are raising public awareness for the dangers to public safety as outlined in the recent GLA report. Also a point of note, we (UCG) chose the venue of Windsor House Victoria St SW1 as this is TfL HQ, we have avoided rush hour again so as to cause as little disruption as possible to the public and focus attention on TfL Here is a link to a web page explaining the reasons for our protest. CLICK HERE We have continually complained of a lack of enforcement creating a real and present threat to lone females at night. Here we provide some shocking facts of how little enforcement there is, it is nothing short of scandalous. CLICK HERE Len Martin Chairman United Cabbies Group

by News Desk | May 26, 2015 | London News

THIS IS THE PRESS RELEASE FROM THE UNITED CABBIES GROUP THAT WENT OUT TO ALL MEDIA/NEWS AND NEWS SYNDICATORS (EG REUTERS etc)

The United Cabbies Group Have called a protest on the 26th May 2015 at 14:00hrs on Victoria St SW1 at Windsor House (TfL HQ)

We have called this second protest to continue awareness for the recent excellent GLA report “Future Proof” We do not want this report to slowly sink off the radar, so we are raising public awareness for the dangers to public safety as outlined in the recent GLA report.

Also a point of note, we (UCG) chose the venue of Windsor House Victoria St SW1 as this is TfL HQ, we have avoided rush hour again so as to cause as little disruption as possible to the public and focus attention on TfL

Here is a link to a web page explaining the reasons for our protest. CLICK HERE

We have continually complained of a lack of enforcement creating a real and present threat to lone females at night. Here we provide some shocking facts of how little enforcement there is, it is nothing short of scandalous. CLICK HERE

Len Martin
Chairman United Cabbies Group

TFL Press Release for Demo on 26th May

by News Desk | May 26, 2015 | London News

EMBARGOED TO 00:01 TUESDAY 26MAY 2015

PN-150

26 May 2015

Transport for London protects taxi and private hire trade by combating illegal minicab activity

· TfL announces early results of Operation Neon, launched to clamp down on illegal minicab activity

· Part of a range of actions to protect the taxi and private hire trades

· United Cabbies Group urged to call off unnecessary taxi protest

Transport for London (TfL) has announced that over the first five evenings of ‘Operation Neon’, a high visibility, multi-agency operation to clamp down and disrupt illegal activity by minicab and taxis, a total of 331 private hire drivers have been reported for failing to comply with regulations.

Eight drivers have been reported for plying for hire offences, plus 30 drivers for parking on taxi ranks, and 73 tickets have been issued for parking offences. Around 600 vehicles have also been moved on from outside clubs and late night venues. Priority locations such as Swallow Street, Dover Street and Berkeley Street in Mayfair have also been kept clear of such vehicles. This action will continue throughout May and June.

Operation Neon involves TfL enforcement and compliance officials, Metropolitan Police Service officers and Westminster City Council parking attendants, and has substantially increased the levels of visible enforcement in central London, combating touting and other illegal activity. It is keeping ranks clear to support legitimate taxi and private hire drivers and has received positive feedback from the trade associations.

Operation Neon is just one element of TfL’s robust enforcement action with police colleagues, which continues to attack touting and bogus cabs.

As a result, the proportion of women approached by touts at the end of a night out in London has reduced by 77 per cent since 2003. Since April 2013, the TfL funded Cab Enforcement Unit has reported 148 drivers for unlawfully plying for hire, resulting in a 97 per cent conviction rate of those that have gone to court.

Garrett Emmerson, TfL’s Chief Operating Officer for Surface Transport, said: “We are determined to protect the livelihoods of all legitimate taxi and private hire drivers through robust enforcement action. Following engagement with the main trade associations (The Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, the London Cab Drivers Club and UNITE), we will continue to be relentless in enforcing the law through action such as Operation Neon to protect the legitimate trade, improve public safety, promote high levels of compliance and tackle illegality”

TfL has also today urged the United Cabbies group (UCG) to call off its protest organised by a small group of taxi drivers outside of the main recognised taxi associations. It is due to take place at 14:00 this afternoon (Tuesday 26 May) and would unnecessarily disrupt Londoners and visitors to the Capital.

According to the UCG, their primary aim is to highlight the ‘Future Proof’ report that was published in February by the Greater London Authority (GLA).

However, TfL provided a full response to ‘Future Proof’ in February making clear that all of the main recommendations either have been, or are in the process of, being implemented. Of the 19 recommendations, 13 were planned or already underway before the report was published. The remainder are now being delivered against specific implementation dates, with the exception of one that is a matter for Government.

Garrett Emmerson added: “There is absolutely no justification for this protest because we are already doing the very things they are calling for. Just like the previous protest on Oxford Street, it will achieve nothing other than to disrupt life and business in London.”

ENDS

Note to Editors:

TfL is responsible for licensing 100,000 taxi and private hire drivers, 85,000 taxi and private hire vehicles and 3,000 private hire operators and is the largest licensing authority in England and Wales and is responsible for licensing over a third of all services.

TfL’s regulation of the taxi trade is widely recognised as the best in the world. The rigorous Knowledge of London examination coupled with the Conditions of Fitness, which require every taxi to be fully accessible, mean an exceptionally high standard is required.

In testimony to the GLA Transport Committee, Matthew Daus (President, International Association of Transportation Regulators) said: “Well, [TfL’s licensing] has been the gold standard for many, many years, and it is even now. As someone who ran the New York City taxi commission for nine years and was there for 14 years, we would often find ourselves comparing ourselves to London and I think most regulators around the country in the United States (US) as well as the world – and we represent everybody at the IATR from the Middle East to Australia – everybody finds themselves comparing themselves to the iconic black cab system.”

Transport for London is doing a number of things to support the taxi trade including:

Investing £600,000 in a Taxi Rank Action Plan to increase the number of ranks across the Capital by 20 per cent by 2020 (an extra 100 ranks).

Publishing a Suburban Ranks Action Plan to ensure the continued provision of taxi services in the suburbs.

Creating taxi and private hire Reference Groups to consider future development of trades. TfL will also establish a regular forum to discuss taxi issues with suburban drivers, alongside established trade representatives.

Launching a new counter service – accessible via Chancel Street, SE1 – as a direct result of requests from the taxi and private hire trades. The service is principally to help customers who are having difficulties with the application process.

Later in June TfL will also be launching a brand new online application process. This will allow customers to easily and conveniently process their entire application online, including the scanning and uploading of supporting documents.

At the request of the trades TfL is also seeking clarity, from the High Court, on whether the device in Uber vehicles constitutes a taximeter.

TfL Press Office

0843 222 4141

Update On Operation Neon : by Jim Thomas.

by News Desk | May 26, 2015 | London News

I wasn’t going to comment further on operation Neon until it was completed at the end of May.

However, I was genuinely disappointed on Saturday night.

After seeing a change in tact from the TfL compliance teams involved in the operation, perhaps I was expecting too much. I truly thought they that learned from previous mistakes and would be more understand towards the problems we encounter on a nightly basis in Mayfair.

However this is not the case and although there has been a noticeable improvement in their operational understanding, there are still areas which need further improvement – Not entirely the field operatives fault, as they are nearly all new recruits and therefore have little or no knowledge of the working practises of the Taxi trade in general.

I arrived as usual at Novikov’s to find that the whole kerbside had been taken by parked vehicles. As the rank was unavailable, drivers had taken to temporarily ranking alongside.

Cabs that have to double parked should in no way constitute an illegal rank, as the rank is permitted and allowed, although Westminster’s parking marshals may see this as a parking contravention.

At the point of the rank, a team of compliance officers were speaking to drivers, trying to get them to move off.

I do understand they have a job to do….but then so do we.

Points Of Order

• Customers leaving Novikov’s want Taxis

• As the rank is not marked, drivers were not parking outside the confines of the rank.

• Compliance teams are not traffic wardens.

To ask drivers – albeit politely – to park opposite on the Holiday Inn rank, is disingenuous an unpractical as customers leaving Novikos will in no way be escorted across the road by door staff who, work in league with the cars and many jobs will be lost to the touts.

It was very disappointing when I tried to point out our predicament to the lady officer and she turned to her colleague and said “they want everything their own way, it’s not right“.

Not true, we just want to be able to offer our services to the public without the public being put in danger by unscrupulous door staff.

“ITS WHAT THE PUBLIC WANT”.

I would however, like to thank the TfL team for their efforts in getting the offending cars ticketed by a friendly NSL traffic warden, but please recognise that the park vehicles were not touts, they were customers and would then remain there for most of the evening. Unlike touts who could have been moved on.

There is only one way to stop the cars parking and that is to mark out the rank, in the same fashion as the Nobu rank. Yes we have the odd problem, but all in all it puts people off unlawful obstruction as is the case nightly at Novikov’s.

Also I would hope the lady compliance officer noticed the difficulty I had getting a young American couple, to cross the street to the Vito she had sent onto the Holiday Inn Hotel taxi rank. They really didn’t want to cross the road and became aggressive. They just didn’t understand why they were not being allowed to get into one of the six Taxis outside the Bar/Restaurant.

There is also a major problem with ranks that put Taxis ahead of an exit, instead of level or slightly behind. Customers leaving Bars/Clubs need to see our illuminated “Taxi” for hire lights. Otherwise, customers will flag passing Taxis, causing conflict between drivers and adding to the problem.

Best Solutions Are Always The Simple Ones.

I believe the situation is resolvable by TfL agreeing to Taxi drivers groups giving PCOs training presentations, where we could put all our points across. For the sake of public safety, it’s time TfL compliance worked in tandem with Taxi drivers rather than against us.

Yes there are problems with over ranking, unauthorised ranks and cloned IDs/Badge and Bills. Over ranking and unauthorised standings are a direct result not keeping up with the demand for rank spaces. Therefore the solution is simple, in the interest of public safety, approve and implement more ranks and more feeder rank spaces.

Surely the Mayor is in favour of Taxis not having to circulate unnecessarily.

Third problem ID/Badge Bill fraud also has a simple solution in the form of RF chips embedded in IDs similar to the system used at Heathrow.

Taxi enforcement and compliance budget problems can also be addressed by TfL not dipping into our license fees to use on other projects.

(Thought fees were supposed to be ring fenced).

If we had proper mobile enforcement squads similar to New York, properly trained compliance similar to Birmingham and enough suitable rank space I for one, would be prepared to pay double the licence fee. After all it is tax deductible, like the subs we pay willingly to our representative groups.

I said Uber was better than London’s black cabs. And then it all kicked off…

by News Desk | May 24, 2015 | London News

When Alex Proud wrote an article in praise of taxi service Uber, he wasn’t prepared for the fierce backlash from London cabbies. So he decided to meet them face to face…

Taxis block the Mall in central London in protest against Uber in June 2014 Photo: Reuters

By Alex Proud

Wow. Talk about a response.

Normally, when I’m feeling a bit too big for my boots, I go on TripAdvisor and read the reviews of my venues. TripAdvisor’s great. It’s where people who tried to blackmail you into giving them a free meal (“or I’ll write a nasty review”) carry out their threats. It’s where the punters who have no understanding of the restaurant-customer relationship vent their grievances. It’s where customers can write 700 words on how it’s your fault they chose a medium wine when what they wanted was bone dry. And, in my experience, it’s almost totally unmoderated. A digital confederacy of dunces.

Anyway, unfair though all this is, bad TripAdvisor reviews are nothing compared to the negative feedback I got for the piece I recently wrote on Uber, the app-based taxi service. In a nutshell, I said that Uber was great and that London’s black cabbies should stop whining and suck it up.

Nothing could have prepared me for the cabbies’ reaction. Talk about being hauled over the virtual coals. The comments, tweets and Facebook posts I got… it was like having a thousand iffy TripAdvisor reviews in one day.

But actually, it wasn’t. While the cabbies’ reactions were often pretty angry and nasty, they differed from TripAdvisor in one crucial way. When you contact TripAdvisor to get them to take down blatantly unfair reviews, they usually tell you to go whistle, if they acknowledge you at all. But when I engaged with the taxi drivers, they said, “Let’s meet up and talk and about this”.

‘I still think Uber is a very good service…’ (Photo: Bloomberg)

I’m really glad we did. It made me realise that online, everything seems black and white. It’s trolling all the way down until one of you says the other is worse than Hitler. But, when you meet most people in the flesh, you realise they’re quite nice. You see that even if their views differ from yours, they have a point and that perhaps the gulf between you is a single step rather than the unbridgeable chasm you thought it was. Before you know it, you’re chatting away and the world a better, less shouty place.

For my part, I’m now happy to hold my hands up and admit that I got parts of it wrong. I still think Uber is a very good service, but I over-simplified the issues and failed to appreciate that the cab drivers have some very legitimate concerns. For that, I’m sorry.

I actually learned quite a lot too. It’s very easy to say that the black cab drivers’ complaining about TFL’s attitude to Uber is the same as black cab drivers complaining about Uber. Actually, they’re not the same. In fact, the cab drivers have all sorts of legitimate sounding grievances against TFL. In order to drive London taxis, cabbies get an “enhanced Criminal Records Bureau (CRB)” background check which goes back three years. Uber drivers get one which goes back six months. As they’re both carrying passengers in exchange for money, it seems reasonable to me that they should get the same CRB.

They also have worries about safety and other concerns about a level playing field. They don’t want to kick Uber out, but they believe that they are being held to higher standards and that TFL doesn’t enforce many of its own rules adequately. This seems a pretty fair complaint to me because TFL’s enforcement of taxi-related regulations, such as touting can be very lax. They’ll only stop it with a police escort which means, in practice, that TFL stops very little touting.

In fact, the cabbies’ anger with TFL is worth a digression. As an organisation, TFL seems to have a weird split personality. When it comes to rail and the Tube, they do a pretty good job, as exemplified by the excellent Overground. But when it comes to roads, they seem to do everything wrong.

Cabbies blocking the Mall last June (Photo: Luke MacGregor/Reuters)

It’s not just the cabbies who hate them. Cyclists bemoan the way that bike infrastructure seems to been designed by someone who has never used a bike. Pedestrians hate the way they are treated as second-class citizens and always made to wait. In fact, road-wise, TFL’s attitude can seem stuck around 1985. They’re still trying to please London’s car drivers – a goal which which is pretty much impossible. So please TFL, sort it out. Recognise that bikes, walking, black cabs and a properly regulated Uber are all part of the solution. Private cars are the problem.

Finally, the taxi drivers want Uber to have a central UK office with a human being you can complain to if things go wrong, and they want to ensure Uber pays tax on the profits it makes in the UK. Again, these seems entirely reasonable to me. In fact, as many people have said about organisations like Uber and Amazon, you’re not really an innovator if your key competitive advantage is that you avoid the regulations others are bound by and the taxes they pay.

Not everything I learned from meeting the drivers was about Uber. I realised just how much they care about London. Even if I totally disagreed with them, it would be hard not to be impressed by how passionate they are. Awful, overused word, I know, but they love their jobs and they love their city. For this alone, I’m going to make more of an effort to use black cabs and I’ll even agree that the Knowledge is better than SatNav and worth a premium (although we might still argue over how much that premium should be).

My biggest takeaway though is that you really should meet those you disagree with face to face. Online, you go straight from mild disagreement to Defcon-1. You sit on Twitter or Facebook sniping away at people you dehumanise because you’re perfect and they’re, well, worse than Hitler. But you can’t do any of this if you’re sitting across the table from them because you can see that they’re like you. Besides, in a world where everyone’s shouting about how right they are on Twitter, it feels strangely good to admit you were wrong to a real live person.

Can Cabs Make a Comeback?

by News Desk | May 24, 2015 | World News

These days ask anyone, and they will tell you Uber is all the rage. At least, they will say that if they don’t work for the cab company. Talk to a cabbie about Uber, and you are liable to get slammed with a string of four-letter expletives that would make a Parris Island Drill Instructor blush.

And that’s not just happening here stateside. The shadow of Uber is being felt even across the pond in Jolly Ol’ England. According to the BBC, official figures show the number of people interested in becoming a London taxi driver continues to fall. Market watchdogs are saying this may signal the beginning of the end for the traditional London black cab, and, of course, everyone is blaming Uber.

Some experts are calling Uber the biggest challenge to the cab trade in at least three centuries. Yes, you read that right: THREE CENTURIES.

Clearly, this is something cabbies need to take seriously. But how can they? How can cabs compete with “new” and “price” and “convenience” and “control” – just some of the selling points repeated by stalwart Uber fans?

If they try leading with tradition, they are likely to quickly learn just how much of a non-starter that “benefit” is. Sure, Londoners and tourists love to see the “traditional” black cabs out there on the roads. But, there was a time when horseless carriages were new and interesting. People lamented the loss of elegant horse-drawn carts then too…and we all see how many of those are still around.

While it appears, Uber is on the rise this does not mean traditional cabs—either in the US or in the UK—are on the way out. The “old” must have someone devise a marketing and PR campaign that will maintain their current client base while showing potential customers why they are better than the new kid on the block.

To make this happen, cabbies will have to do something they haven’t had to do in the past. They will have to compete. Transitioning from a market monopoly to a highly competitive market overnight is a tough order, and it requires a very specific targeted PR campaign. The longer “traditional” cab companies complain, sue and argue, the harder that job will be.

Source: Everything PR