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Rivals raise safety fears as Poles take rickshaws in fresh direction
Financial Times Aug 27
A fast-growing Polish rickshaw company is giving established British rivals a run for their money after developing a form of pedicab that offers tourists a better view of London.
Bartek Miernik and Tomasz Mysko, two of the thousands of Poles now working in the UK, startled competitors last year by designing and launching the back-to-front rickshaw. Unlike the standard version where the rider sits in front, the Poles put the rider at the back and passengers in front, so they can see more easily.
Customers immediately liked the idea and in just 18 months the partners have expanded their company, Traditional Rickshaws, from 15 machines to 60. "It's obvious. It's so much better than staring at the rider's backside," says 39-year-old Mr Mysko.
But rivals say the arrangement is dangerous because there is nothing to protect passengers in an accident. The London Pedicab Operators Association, the industry body, has declined to accept Traditional Rickshaws as a member. Chris Smallwood, the LPOA chairman, says: "Passengers cannot sit in front in approved types of pedicab."
However, Mr Miernik, who is 29, denies there is any extra risk. "It's a complete myth," he says. "Rickshaws are rather slow. So there's little danger of hitting something in front. We have had many knocks. But it's always from behind."
Mr Miernik confirms he and Mr Mysko tried unsuccessfully to join the LPOA. But he declines to bad-mouth the organisation or his competitors. He says: "We don't want to compete in dirty ways. We want to compete on style."
Mr Miernik, who arrived in the UK just before the European Union's 2004 enlargement, first worked as a rickshaw rider for an established company. Mr Mysko came to Britain in the 1990s and gained experience as a cycle courier manager. Together they designed their machines - and had them made in Poland at lower cost than British competitors.
But they do not compete on price. Like other operators they rent machines to riders on a weekly basis, leaving the riders to keep the fares. They happily admit they encourage riders to match their fares to their passengers' wallets. Mr Miernik says: "You learn who your passengers are. If they want to go to their hotel and it's a smart place, you can charge appropriately."
The company's record fare is Pounds 250 - shared by three riders on a single job.
Entry barriers in the rickshaw market are low because, unlike other forms of public transport, it is unregulated. With riders coming from all over the world, it is growing rapidly, with a jump in the last year from 400 to 500, according to the LPOA, whose members account for about a quarter of the machines.
After the trade started in 1998, the transport authorities failed in early efforts to bring order by having rickshaws classified, like taxis, as hackney carriages. The operators successfully argued in a 1999 case that since charges were based on the number of passengers, they were not hackney carriages but stage carriages.
The LPOA says it would like rickshaws to be licensed as stage carriages, as long as the regulations are not restrictive. Transport for London, the capital's transport regulator, plans to introduce mandatory licensing but can only do so, under current legislation, if pedicabs are legally classified as hackney carriages. The authority is seeking a High Court judgment on this point. If it fails, new laws will be needed, it says.
For their part, Mr Miernik and Mr Mysko are making the best of it and are already planning to expand overseas - in California.
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