Taxi Driver Online

Another taxi graveyard


The East London car park that's turning into a graveyard for abandoned taxis

https://www.mylondon.news/news/nostalgi ... s-21163493

The eerie scene looks like something out of a zombie film


Image: Kaci Lynn/MyLondon

If you happen to be parking your car in Ilford anytime soon you might just come across a strange sight that somehow manages to be both fascinating and a bit creepy.

Hidden away in a multi-storey car-park in the East London town is a collection of vehicles seemingly now consigned to London's history.

What you'll come across is a ghostly taxi rank, though none of these old London cabs have been on the road in a long time.


Image: Kaci Lynn/MyLondon

The car-park in question is Citi-Park on Clements Road in Ilford, the upper floors of which seem to have been taken over by the fleet of ghost taxis.

Each sits collecting dust, with a thick layer on every windscreen and the cabs themselves in varying states of disrepair, with flat tires and wing-mirrors dangling by a thread on a few.

One has very clearly been vandalised, its windscreen caved in and hubcaps missing.

The sight certainly leaves you wondering why have these taxis, such an iconic sight across the city and key to keeping it moving, been left to rot like this?

The obvious explanation would be that the pandemic led to a drop off in demand for the service taxis provide.

At its height last year, a field in Epping Forest made national headlines when it was filled with hundreds of black cabs... and then 50 of these had their catalytic converters stolen in a theft worth over £100,000.

At that point in time the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association (LTDA) believed only 20 per cent of cabbies were still driving their vehicles.

But with things now opening up, you would expect these taxis to be back on the road again if lack of demand was the main issue.

The answer may instead lie in London's changing priorities and focus on creating a cleaner environment for us all to live in.


Image: Kaci Lynn/MyLondon

The Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ), currently confined to Central London, was planned by Boris Johnson and introduced by Sadiq Khan in April 2019 to combat air pollution.

The result of the zone was a 20 per cent drop in emissions in Central London, but it also meant that older vehicles could no longer drive in the area without paying a charge of £12.50 per day.

This affected almost every diesel fuelled car built prior to 2015, including the capital's huge fleet of black (or in some cases pink) cabs.

A quick search of the number plates in Ilford's taxi graveyard will tell you none of these diesel cabs are up to that standard, so could this be the reason they were discarded?

If so we could be about to see a whole lot more of these taxi graveyards popping up across the city with the planned expansion of the ULEZ to everything within the north and south circular roads on October 25.

140,000 vehicles inside this area are expected to fall below the emissions standards of the zone.

This could also include any older taxis like the ones in these pictures that have managed to carry on operating outside of the ULEZ until now.

Didn't think the London ULEZ was having such an affect on the black cab trade?

But you'd think it wouldn't be that difficult for the journalist to find out something a bit more concrete rather than what here looks like little more than speculation

Don't paint a very healthy picture of the London black cab trade.

The one that's bashed up is only 10 years old so surely they can be repaired and rented out to someone.

Although it looks like the airbag has been deployed so maybe it's been written off.

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