Yesterday, I attended, along with other trade groups a meeting with Tph managers, Tfl Managing Director Vernon Everitt and also Deputy Mayor for transport, Heidi Alexander.
We discussed several matters including charge points, fleet numbers, taxi ranks and also taxi age limits.
As we all are aware the new 12 year age limit brought in by the Mayor will have massive negative repercussions for the trade.
At a time when self employed taxi drivers are being made “unemployed “ due to Tfl proposals, one has to ask, just how bad can the situation get?
Whilst working on Sat, i had members of the public ask me ( whilst pob )..”where can i get a cab”….. for the last weeks, if not months, i have had members desperately calling the office to ask…” Where can i get a cab”…. and most recently i spoke to Michael Glassman at Colts Cabs who informed me that he has drivers asking him daily…”have you got a cab?”
this is a disgraceful situation we now find ourselves in.
The Mayors proposal that he wanted to see a cut of 65% in taxi emissions was to end in 2025 but the LCDC after analysing the figures with the new shrunken fleet, due to the pandemic and decommissioning scheme strongly believes that the trade meets the 65% emission target in 2022.
The trade has spent some £300m in ZEC vehicles and with the volume of older cabs now gone and only E5 and E6 cabs on the road, if the Mayor agrees with the newer figures on our emissions, then the LCDC has asked the Mayor to freeze the age limit at 14 years.
After I had again pleased our case with the Deputy Mayor, she instructed Helen Chapman to contact the team at Tfl who projects the emission figures and asked them to revisit and re calculate the taxi emissions with the smaller fleet and present these to the Mayor.
I would like to thank the Deputy Mayor for Transport for requesting this action.
Grant Davis
