Comment piece in the Speccie
Thought I'd be annoyed with it when I read the headline, although she probably does have a point as regards much of this, although not much here that hasn't been said before over the years. However, as for the individual he said/she said stuff, as per usual would be good to here the other side
The black cab is dying out. Good.London doesn’t need these arrogant relicsMonica PorterA recent study by the Centre for London thinktank claims that the city’s black cabs could disappear forever, unless something is done to reverse the decline. Thanks to Uber, the ubiquitous satnav which devalues the cabbies’ hard-earned Knowledge of London’s streets, and the Mayor’s anti-motorist measures, there are ever fewer black cabs rumbling around the capital. The number dropped from more than 23,000 in 2014 to just under 14,500 last year – down by a third. Only a hundred licences were handed out last year. At this rate, we are told, they will vanish altogether by 2045.
Well, tough. I’ve been a Londoner for half a decade and have had enough bad experiences with our black cabs to feel that their disappearance wouldn’t bother me a jot. It’s not much fun at the best of times driving around London, what with the awful traffic, ceaseless roadworks, crazy e-bike riders, and cameras everywhere just itching to catch you straying into a bus lane or yellow box junction. So the last thing you need is an arrogant cabbie – many of them drive as if they own the roads – cutting you up. Perhaps they are bad-tempered because it’s maddening to drive around London all day long, but in that case they’re in the wrong job.
Most people have experienced the aggravation of trying to hail a cab home late at night only to be blithely ignored because you want to go in the ‘wrong’ direction – i.e. one inconvenient for the driver. Some will only go north of the river, others south. Some refuse to travel east, while others won’t go west. And back in the days when I was a bit more inclined to travel by black cab, I recall instances when the driver chose a slow-moving main route to my destination, when I (who did not spend years learning the Knowledge) was well acquainted with one or two quicker routes using less busy byways, which would have saved several quid on the fare.
But if you think these are the worst examples of their behaviour, you’d be wrong. On one occasion many years ago, I’d been driving around town with a lady about whom I was writing an article, and we’d arrived at a car park near her hotel. It was pretty full but luckily I spotted a single empty space and drove towards it. As I started backing in, a black cab driver suddenly appeared and honked at me furiously. He’d noticed the space too and reckoned it was his, but as it happens I got there first. C’est la vie, right? But this cabbie wasn’t of a philosophical bent. He stuck his head out of the window and yelled that I should ‘get the hell out of his space’. When I refused, he glared at me with a look of pure hatred and expressed his wish that I ‘would crash my car and die’. As an ambassador for his line of work, he was rather disastrous. I was appalled on behalf of my passenger, an elderly sweetie from the provinces who’d never before visited the capital, and after that might never have wanted to again.
The last time I took a black cab – it was pre-pandemic, I think – I had to listen to a mammoth moan about the ghastliness of having to compete with Uber. Those upstart drivers didn’t know their way around, could hardly speak English, and unlike black cabs, they were dangerous. Women shouldn’t get into them. (This argument was somewhat discredited after John Worboys was jailed in 2009 for drugging, raping and sexually assaulting around 100 female passengers in the back of his ‘safe’ black cab.)
Occasionally, black cab drivers have gone on strike against Uber, gridlocking large chunks of central London, bringing traffic to a standstill. Unsurprisingly, the cabbies became even less popular as a result. It seemed to me they were simply railing against the fact that times change, that some occupations will inevitably have to evolve or else disappear, due to new technologies, innovations, or a market’s new entrants. Where now are the forerunners of today’s cabbies – the countless thousands who drove London’s horse-drawn carriages until a century ago? Heck, I could have told my moaning driver that, as a lifelong print journalist, my own trade has been heading towards the cliff edge for years.
There is, of course, one way in which black cabs can avoid disappearing off the streets: they can be more affordable. The fares they charge are exorbitant, often twice as high as an Uber’s for the same journey. And on 26 April they are set to rise further. Sadly, black cabs are a luxury only the wealthy can afford. And as with so many other aspects of life in London, it never used to be this way.
Monica Porter is a journalist and author. Her latest book is A History of Europe in 12 Cafes.
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