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London's licensed minicabs are gearing up for a hi-tech future
Knowledge is power, they say, and no more so than in the taxi trade. The preeminence of the traditional black cab is being gently eroded in London, its historic home, by a new generation of licensed, regulated minicabs. While the old school relies on a stringent memory test of London roads known as The Knowledge - with the definite article, thank you very much - a new wave of drivers looks to satellite navigation, state-of-the-art software and 3G mobile-phone technology.
It's a bit like Kiefer Sutherland's 21st-century thriller 24 versus John Thaw's hard-as-nails The Sweeney. And while the heart goes out to the gritty old-timer, the head is increasingly looking to the hi-tech version.
At the vanguard of this new generation is Addison Lee, a family-owned business that coordinates 1,200 drivers - around 500 vehicles at any time, moving 12,000 passengers each day throughout the capital, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You can't hail minicabs like black cabs, but you can book them by phone. The fare - unless you're daft - is agreed in advance. In the old days they may, or may not, have known how to reach your destination.
But following the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998, alongside the black cabs with the familiar white backplate there is a now a small army of vehicles with a diamond-shaped green badge that indicates they are licensed for private hire.
Liam Griffin, managing director of Addison Lee, claims black-cab drivers will not be able to continue competing directly with his licensed minicabs. "Black cabs do have a future, but whether it is in the marketplace they are sitting in now, I don't know," he said. He believes black cabs should exploit their monopoly to be able to ply for trade, rather than compete with private hire operators by setting up radio-based operations that make them no more than "glorified minicabs".
While Addison Lee says regulation has made a major contribution to its business, it now fears that the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and Transport for London have gone too far.
Griffin warns that plans to increase the level of criminal record checks, insist on more frequent MOT tests and tougher tests of The Knowledge, and raise fees for operators and drivers, will force people back to the illegal trade the regulations were intended to eliminate. "We were big advocates of it and it has provided benefits for us, but there is now a danger they are trying to add various layers to it and increase the costs for operators, and that is going to make the whole thing a bit more prohibitive," he said.
"The reason that they brought this in was to beat the touts, and there is a danger that they will over-regulate. Touts could become a big problem again. "We get people in between jobs who want to minicab. No one ever wanted to become a minicab driver - they are people on their ways to becoming builders or actors."
Griffin says that while Addison Lee's standards exceed the law, he is concerned overregulation will deter people from joining firms further down the ladder that feed experienced drivers to Addison Lee. The company has benefited from the regulatory regime. Its turnover has more than doubled from around £18m in 2001 to £38m last year.
Griffin says business was also boosted by standardising its fleet, brand identity and logo, and by investing in technology. There are no plans to float the business, which was founded in 1975 in Battersea by two Londoners, John Griffin and Lenny Foster. Griffin, company chairman and father of Liam, was working for a cab firm when a chance to buy its Battersea office came up.
In order to find a financial backer he advertised in the Jewish Chronicle - he lived in a Jewish part of north London at the time - and found Lenny Foster. So why not "Foster-Griffin"? Because Addison begins with an "A" and so would be seen first in the phone book. A taxi controller lived in Addison Gardens, and they thought it sounded upmarket. And the Lee "just sounded good with Addison". "It is a family-run business," says Liam, a 32-year old economics graduate. Foster's son, Daryl, 46, is now chief executive and Liam's brother, Kieran, 35, is marketing director.
He says the company is looking at investing in a technology platform for other operators to set up in cities such as Birmingham and Manchester. Technology is a vital part of the Addison Lee business. It designed its own software in-house, and has three Russian designers helping on its next generation of technology. Its system enables operators to send information about jobs to an in-car phone-cum-computer, the XDA. When the job is allocated, the XDA sends a message to the customer's mobile without the driver seeing the phone number.
Addison Lee had real problems with its cars. It chose the Fiat Ulysses people carrier but found it had to replace the automatic gearbox in 210 out of 240 models. It is now bringing 475 Volkswagen Sharans into its fleet this year, a £6m order, and is talking to Ford. "They [Fiat] are absolutely useless," says Liam Griffin. "It cannot be overstated how poorly they have looked after one of the major customers. Their managing director is banned from our building."
For someone with 20 years in the minicab trade, Garfield Thomson has had an unusually high number of brushes with royalty. A former metalworker who moved into the business when the Eighties recession put paid to manufacturing in London, Mr Thomson, 57, is happy in his new life as one of Addison Lee's 1,700 self-employed drivers.
He recalls that he once picked up the photographer Lord Snowdon in the City of London. As they came through Horseguards, the lord wound down the window. "In the car coming the other way was the Queen and he said, 'funny meeting you here'." Perhaps an even more surreal experience was a last-minute call to deliver 50 silver spoons to Highgrove, although he regrettably never got the opportunity to meet the Prince of Wales."
But away from the celebrity circuit - he has also met Frank Lampard Snr, the West Ham footballer - would he recommend it to young people as a career? "Addison Lee has changed this game big time. The quality of work is better than you would get anywhere else," he says.
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