Cabbies see no pick-up in Olympics ‘chaos city’ The head of London’s biggest minicab company says the city’s roads face gridlock unless Olympic spectators stick to the Tube. He says giving visitors priority over regular customers would be “business suicide”.
John Griffin, chairman of Addison Lee, says the London 2012 Olympics will be “damaging” to his company – and potentially to the whole taxi industry.
“It won’t help our level of service,” he says. “And it won’t please our regular customers.”
Mr Griffin maintains that the games will be more of a nuisance than an opportunity. The trade has been the subject of rumours, ranging from black cabs vowing to desert the city to Addison Lee gaining preferential access to the priority “games lanes”.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Griffin says the taxi trade has been thrust on to the “front line” of Olympic transport, with officials hoping that taxis will hang around to cater for visitors when sports events ended each day. While insisting that “emotionally I want to play my part”, Mr Griffin’s loyalties are clear. “I’m not prepared to sacrifice the relationship I have with my customers for the benefit of someone coming from abroad to watch the events,” he says.
The family business, which has a 4,000-strong fleet and makes about 25,000 journeys every day, relies on pre-booked jobs from its established customer base. Mr Griffin says: “If we didn’t do a single job [for the Olympics], it wouldn’t bother me one bit.”
His worries over how the city’s transport network will cope with the games’ demands chime with fears and annoyance over the Olympic Route Network.
Transport officials have been working feverishly to “dispel myths” about the 109-mile network that will be used to ferry athletes, officials and media to the venues. A third of the network includes special lanes from which non-Olympic traffic will be excluded for most of the day. Mr Griffin says the pick-up and drop-off nature of London’s black-cab operation means “they will benefit in a way that we [minicabs] won’t”.
However, drivers of black taxis appear unconvinced.
“I don’t think it’s going be good for any [taxi group],” says Steve McNamara, a spokesman for the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, the biggest group representing London’s 25,000 black cab drivers. “London is going to be chaos city ... We’re going to have lots and lots of closed roads, we’re gonna have awful traffic and no work. It doesn’t get worse than that,” he adds.
A survey by the LTDA, showing that up to 40 per cent of cabbies will go on holiday during the games, lends some credence to the rumours. But Mr McNamara insists that there will be no shortage of cabbies – and that gossip about fare rises is just that.
Boris Johnson, London’s mayor, has been on a charm offensive, reminding drivers “that the ‘Knowledge’ of London that you worked so hard to earn is going to be more important than ever before [for the Olympics]” – referring to their notoriously difficult test to memorise streets.
John Mason, director of taxi and private hire for the official body Transport for London, says: “There’s going to be a massive demand for taxis throughout the games ... [Those] who take a couple of weeks off are going be kicking themselves.”
He says Olympic visitors and the night-time economy will make up for lost demand from locals going abroad in August.
However, Mr McNamara says he is far from convinced, insisting: “We’re very worried about the Olympics.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e80a1b7c-3e13 ... z1jWnPUJqF
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