Business

An epic row is brewing over Uber’s Soho ‘taxi rank’

The latest fight between Uber and taxi drivers once again pits the gig economy against centuries-old laws

In 1634, in the shadow of the 100-foot maypole outside the church of St Mary-Le-Strand in London, four men dressed in uniform waited with horse-drawn carriages lined up in a row. They worked for Captain John Bailey, a wealthy veteran of Sir Walter Raleigh’s expeditions, and had been given instructions to charge people fixed tariffs to transport them to different areas of London. This was the world’s first taxi rank.

A mile and a half away and 387 years later, Uber stands accused of trying to pull the same stunt as Bailey’s coachmen – only this time by breaking the law.

As lockdown restrictions lifted and restaurants opened for outdoor dining, cars can no longer navigate through the labyrinthian streets of Soho in London’s West End. At the start of May, Uber directed customers to designated “pick up points” located on Wardour Street, Archer Street and Romilly Street, telling cars to flock there to collect their passengers instead of attempting to collect them near their tables.

These pick-up spots, taxi drivers claim, are tantamount to taxi ranks — and set a dangerous precedent for the survival of the ailing black cab industry. Last week, taxi unions urged Transport for London (TfL) and Westminster City Council to shut these pick-up locations down and disperse any lurking vehicles. “Uber has always got away with everything.” says Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, which represents over 10,000 licenced black cab drivers. “ I don’t think there’s any malicious intent, I don’t think there is an intent to do anything illegal, there’s just the ‘I do what I want attitude’.”

According to Uber, these pick-up points aren’t taxi ranks at all. An Uber spokesperson claims that the pedestrianisation of some areas of Soho has left riders unsure of the best place to meet their driver, and it set up these spots to make life easier for drivers and passengers alike. “Drivers should not wait for a trip in these areas or pick up any passengers they are not matched with on the app,” the spokesperson says. The ride-hailing company, which is in talks with TfL and Westminster City Council to find a solution to this issue, says the pick-up spots will not be permanent.

It’s easy to see why this specific patch of London has become so contentious. After a brutal year for both private hire vehicle drivers and cabbies, the hundreds of restaurants, bars and cafes bringing people into the city provide a lifeline. Neither side can afford to lose income. Uber is under pressure from investors to prove it can withstand a US regulatory threat to the gig economy model, inspired by drivers in the UK winning a Supreme Court case to gain more employment rights earlier this year. The company set aside $600 million in its latest accounts to resolve historical claims in the UK relating to the reclassification of drivers as workers earlier this year, and will have to prove that operating in London is viable while paying minimum wage to drivers.

Meanwhile, black cabs were being stored in fields as demand evaporated during the pandemic, and the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association (LTDA) said only 20 per cent of drivers still had their vehicles in the capital in November 2020. They also face yet more competition from private hire vehicles on mobility app FreeNow.

Taxi drivers who claim ride-hailing companies have been undercutting their fares for years know how important historic laws, which are still enforced today, can be in protecting their trade. Since Uber launched in London in 2012, it has operated in a peculiar grey area. It can offer people rides from one place to another in exchange for money, but it can’t call itself a taxi service, and its drivers cannot pick people up wherever they want by being hailed on the street.

That privilege has been reserved since 1865 to generations of cabbies, who have to memorise around 25,000 of London’s streets in a test known as the Knowledge to gain their licence, in a process that takes an average of three to four years. Preparing for the test, which has a 50 per cent pass rate, by constantly traversing the 10 kilometre radius around Charing Cross has a physical effect — it’s proven to grow cab drivers’ hippocampus.

The resulting advantage isn’t just an encyclopedic knowledge of London: it provided guaranteed income. Cabbies are able to pick up people wherever they like, use taxi ranks across the city, and are permitted to use most bus lanes. They don’t set their own fares, but are exempt from congestion charges, a levy that costs £15 per day for private hire vehicles.

As Uber and its rivals offer discounts to customers and add thousands of vehicles to the streets of London, Zone 1 has become the final bastion for the taxi trade. “[The Uber app] will tell their drivers to gravitate to those pickup points, knowing full well that if people are walking towards them, they’re going to hit the button and the closest car is going to get the job,” says Alan McGrady, of the London Cab Drivers Club, one of London’s main taxi trade organisations. “But if they get away with it here who’s to say that they’re not going to expand it throughout the West End or onto Oxford Street or onto Regent’s Street?”

The crux of this issue with Uber’s pick-up spots goes deeper than this to 1847, which is when horse-drawn hackney carriages were defined in the Town Police Clauses Act as “every wheeled carriage, whatever may be its form or construction, used in standing or plying for hire in any street”. Those without a licence caught plying for hire, an ambiguous term which could mean parking in a designated area or leaning against a stationary carriage, were fined 40 shillings (the equivalent of around £212 in today’s money) — four times more than the fine for letting a chimney accidentally light on fire detailed in the same Act, and the same amount as someone behaving in a drunk or indecent way at a police station.

There was some update to the licensing law in the 1970s and in the 1990s, but since then there has been no national legislative change, despite the changes in technology, travel behaviour and transport demands. None of these laws were prepared for the arrival of Uber. Today, if a private hire vehicle is caught plying for hire or idling on a taxi rank in the same way as the law described 174 years ago, they could face a £1,000 fine and the loss of their licence.

Yet Uber’s simple act of replacing geolocation pickups with pick-up spots, where people know they are likely to be able to order a car quickly, may be in breach of that same set of rules — demonstrating how limited the ride-hailing market still is.

There are 40 licenced taxi ranks in central London where drivers can stop for a maximum of 45 minutes or 60 minutes, and a further 45 ranks in the City of London. In Soho, the taxi ranks are small, but they offer a recognisable place for drivers to pick people up.

The rank in Old Compton Street has been moved to Dean Street because of al-fresco dining, but people have learned where the cabs are now, McGrady says. He is convinced that Uber is trying to do the same thing, training people to “walk out to their cars waiting”, and that TfL is not doing enough to stop them. “Why would you want to kill off the best taxi trade in the world? Who knows,” he says. “But that’s the way we feel in the moment, that nothing is going our way.”

TfL says it is “looking into this issue” and has deployed officers to monitor specific locations to ensure that no vehicles are causing an obstruction to the highway. Westminster City Council, the local authority that governs Soho, does not have the power to stop Uber from setting up pick-up points, and can only intervene to make sure they abide by traffic controls. The LTDA has vowed to take any driver found breaking the rules to court — and says it will challenge Uber if it doesn’t stop the use of pick-up locations.

McGrady also claims there have been “land grabs” during the pandemic as councils ate into taxi ranks across London to widen pavements for pedestrians — and that some councils don’t allow black cab drivers to set up new ones at all. An average taxi rank can take three years to set up, whereas Uber has created pick-up points with immediate effect. The only way taxi drivers can compete with apps that offer cars in under five minutes is by being even more convenient, McGrady argues. “Our slice of the cake is slowly being cut to pieces. Plying for hire is the be all and end all of it.”

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This article was originally published by WIRED UK