Letter To Taxi Leaks Regarding Gas Conversion Costs.

Hi Jim ... my cab is 14 years old but in good nick .. Was looking at the lpg @AutogasLPG conversion they are doing in Birmingham for £8k the same price you estimated in ur article http://ift.tt/2aLMN8j… 

Having emailed back and forth .. Looks like hoping to get it passed in nov .. 

But like always upping the price for London £9k plus vat = £10,800, plus a new rad and exhaust recommended ... I will enclosed a couple of the emails so you can see if you are interested.

Email 1 from Auke Faber:

Thanks for your interest in the project. As you have heard from my Colleague Kirsty, we will hopefully start the trial in the next few weeks and if all goes well, we should have a good result before the end of the year.

We already have a converted trial vehicle and 1 additional vehicle standing by, but thank you for offering your services for the trail.

The trial will be performed with a TX2. We are looking into asking whether the approval would also apply for the TX1 as the new engine will be the same for all 3 TX models and the TX1 and 2 share the same gearbox.

The engine we install is a brand-new 2.0L Turbo Opel engine. It is a current engine in the Vauxhall Astra VXR, it is designed to produce 280Bhp, but is detuned to match the power and have a similar torque-curve to the diesel engine it replaces.

The range on LPG is up to 300-400 miles depending on drivestyle and environment (city/motorway)

The conversion itself will take 2,5-3 days and costs around £9,000.- plus VAT. It includes:

-          Brand new 2.0L Turbo Opel engine

-          Adapterplate to match the original gearbox

-          LPG system incl 100 Liter LPG tank (80 Liter usable volume) and a 12 Liter petrol tank.

-          Full conversion fitted, all new parts.

We will ask you to buy the radiator and exhaust that we offer, as a safety. A used exhaust is most likely clogged up with soot. Both of good quality and price.

The tank is installed in the boot. The spare wheel can be relocated to the front or replaced by a spraycan solution (sufficient for MOT). The diesel tank is removed and a small 12 Liter petrol tank is installed in it’s place.

At the moment 13 operating Birmingham taxi’s are using this solution (both TX1 and TX2) and are very happy with them. The engine is powerful, quiet and without vibration. Running on LPG also means a fuel saving which we estimated at 20%, but the drivers are reporting higher and are saving up to £50 per week. Both Birmingham and London will give a life-extension of the cab of 5 years added to the age-limit in the city.

In Birmingham a total of 63 cabs will be converted as part of a Government Scheme.

I would like to forward your details to our London agent, so they can keep you up to date with the progress, if that’s ok?

I’m assuming you are currently driving a TX1?

Please feel free to contact me for any additional information about the conversion.

Best regards,

Auke Faber

Conversion Scheme Advisor

I wrote back pointing out the discrepancy in pricing.

Email 2.

Yes, the price has increased. Mostly because of the Brexit, the Pound has dropped compared to the euro. Most of the systems components are bought and developed in The Netherlands. So at the moment the system is sold at a loss in Birmingham where the price was fixed in the Birmingham project.

It is still not clear what the final price will be as some parts will become cheaper due to bigger numbers and other parts get more expensive due to improved performance based on the first results. If the pound picks up, this should also help the project.

We are hoping the price will come down, but we thought it might be better to aim for a higher price, if the price comes down people will respond better than if you promote a lower price, which ends up higher.

Hopefully in a few months the price will be set.

I don’t know precisely the price of the exhaust, but I believe the radiator is 60 pounds.

Best regards,

Auke Faber

Conversion Scheme Advisor

I replied.

Hi , 

London taxi drivers have been told the conversion would be £8,000 , we have been given information like this http://ift.tt/2aLMNoB…  with the actual conversion being £10.800 after vat plus radiator and exhaust you will probably find it a difficult market without grants. 

The reason I point this out is because the whole taxi fleet of fairways and TX1's were forced to buy highly inflated priced conversion kits to bring the taxis up to euro 3 , everyone of those companies went into liquidation leaving drivers with no parts or warranty on the conversions.

The whole trade felt ripped off , if your conversion is going to be £11,000 instead of the £8,000 being charged in Birmingham , they are liable to be scepticle.

I don't mean to cause offence by pointing this out, but feel you should be aware of what has happened re conversions in the past.

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Taxi Drivers And Cricket Fans Caught Out As Taxi Rank Removed From Outside Edgbaston

Leon Daniels, £25m Later....Chaos

Leon Daniels stated, "The return of two way traffic at Elephant and Castle, will transform it to a place people want to be".

   

New traffic systems, plus the segregated cycle lanes have bought London to virtual gridlock. The situation has become so bad that Metropolitan Police Armed Response Officers will be arriving at incidents on the back of motorbikes. Every day, we see emergency services stuck in the gridlock surrounding the Cycle Supper Highway. 

Badly thought out systems are seeing journey lengths increased in time and distance as vehicles are banned from no left turns/ no right turns at certain junctions. Westbound traffic along the embankment wishing to use Westminster Bridge, now have to travel an extra quarter of a mile, plus bringing more traffic and more pollution through Parliament Square. All because cyclists can't be trusted to cross the road properly with other right turning vehicles at the bridge junction.  

Preventable deaths in London caused by pollution from traffic emissions has risen sharply in parallel with the new cycle lanes, from 8,000 to 10,000 per annum. 

Traffic is set to get a lot worse as both Westminster and Islington Councils plan to take two major roads away from motorist. Tottenham Court Road is to become buses and bikes only. Taxis and private cars are to be diverted into Gower Street (already gridlocked most of the day) which will become two way. 

But the system that will effect the traffic most of all, is the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street. Oxford street looks for most of the day and night like a bus garage, full of stationary, empty buses. Where are all these buses supposed to go?

Figures showed that on the day I the last bus strike, pollution levels around the Oxford Street area, dropped dramatically by an amazing 50%.

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Be Careful What you Wish For : Toronto Bring in Third Tier Rules Just For Uber.

The saga continues.

Toronto's taxi drivers are accusing the city of doing little to make sure Uber comply with new regulations. 

Also, Industry regulators say that Uber isn't following the city's new regulations, which came into effect a few weeks ago. 

In May, after a Uber were found guilty of illegally operating outside of the legislated regulations, instead of banning, the City Council voted to regulate the ride-share service by creating a new third tier of transportation and bought in a new set of rules for private transportation companies (or PTCs).

However, some taxi drivers say the city is doing little to make sure Uber's actually complying with the new rules.

The United Taxi Workers Association will meet tomorrow and is considering holding another protest, possibly in early September. 

Toronto's last taxi protest shut down many streets including the 501 streetcar route in December.

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Statement From Action4Cabbies Regarding JR On Credit Card Surcharges.

On January 18th 2016 Action For Cabbies embarked on a crowdfunding campaign to try and raise an initial £600,000 so as to obtain permission from the court to launch a judicial review against Transport For London for alledgedly wrongly and potentially illegally issuing Uber with a Private Hire Vehicle Operators License. The initial deadline for raising the funds was set for March 18th, after several extensions the final deadline was on April 7th. The extensions were given so as to see if we could still make the original target and to give the LTDA time to match the £300,000 as was originally agreed. Despite our best efforts we failed to reach the £600,000 target, we managed to raise in excess of £300,000. Nobody in the history of the Licensed London Taxi Trade had ever managed to raise funds to this level before but sadly the original plan was not to be.

Anticipating that we may need to adopt an alternative plan a consultation was undertaken on March 3rd by AskPOB. This consultation was to find out if those who contributed to the original fund would back an alternative plan to try and launch a judicial review against Transport For London with regard to certain aspects surrounding how TFL were  implementing the impending mandatory credit card initiative.  To that effect we asked Taxi Drivers to decide whether this would be a route that they would like us to examine and potentially undertake. The majority voted in favour to proceed with seeking permission for a Judicial Review.

Upon realising that we would not reach the £600,000 target and with a majority vote from the consultation it was decided on March 31st 2016 to switch from trying to obtain permission for a judicial review in relation to Uber being licensed to attempting to obtain a judicial review in relation to how the credit card initiative was being invoked. Everybody who pledged through the crowdfunding initiative was given the opportunity to withdraw their pledge by 5pm on April 5th.Numerous announcements were made over various platforms including e-mail, Facebook and Twitter and it was made clear that any uncancelled pledges would be used for attempting to obtain permission for the judicial review surrounding credit cards.

Certain aspects of the alternative judicial review had to be altered as there would have been no prospect of getting a positive result as well as aspects that were not unreasonable  such as objecting to fixed payment machines, the mandated requirement to accept credit cards, the list of suppliers to name but 3.

An application for a judicial review was lodged with the court on May 3rd and some of the monies that had been collected were paid to Rosenblatts Solicitors as a retainer, all remaining monies are being dealt with via our accountants Raffingers and will be paid to Rosenblatts Solicitors upon receiving a full and final costing.

On July 17th we received informal notification from our solicitors that the  attempt to obtain a judicial review had failed, we would not be given leave to challenge Transport For London in court. We received the official notification several days later.

Naturally we are very disappointed with this outcome as we feel that there is a strong enough case. We would like to thank every single person that believed in this cause. We may have failed on this occasion however the positives that have come from this are enormous.....the biggest positive being that we have proved that we CAN galvanise ourselves and fight back as an industry.

Moving forward we are going to continue fighting tooth and nail to help protect this industry and help it to flourish. We may have lost this battle but we aim to help win this war.

Once again we wish to thank each and every one of you for your support.

Stronger Together

Action For Cabbies

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Appeal, Please Help Find This Cabby.

Jim, if you could help find this Cabbie I would be very grateful. 

On 30. July 3016 at 21.45 a Licenced Cab Driver stopped to assist a Police Officer wlth a distressed child on Sussex Gardens, at the junction of Talbot Square. The driver took both the child and Police officer to St Mary's Hospital.

 

The Officer would like to commend the Cab Driver for his assistance. This was not possible at the time. 

So could he make himself known at Paddington Green Police Station, where the officer would like to express his thanks. If the officer is not there, could the cabbie please leave a contact number and ask the station officer to put it on the station board?

This is from the friend of a friend and going around the shelters quite a bit now. Cheers!

All the best

Terry 

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Mayors Major Crackdown On Rogue Minicab Drivers, No More Than A Damp Squid...by Jim Thomas.

Mayor Sadiq Khan has ordered an extra 250 compliance officers to be deployed over the next year to target drivers of private hire vehicles and other cabs operating illegally.

TfL's operation Neon officers hiding at a bus stop in Victiria.

So with operation Neon, in the eyes of the majority of night Taxi drivers, an enormous flop....we are to get more of the same, unwarranted COs, with no power of stop, walking round London doing absolutely nothing other than harassing Taxi drivers over ranking. 

We are told the new compliance officers will focus on hotspots of illegal private hire car activity including the West End and the City. Apparently they will have the ability to access the insurance MIB but only in office hours (9am to 5pm)....you couldn't make this stuff up.

“I want Londoners to feel safe when they take a taxi or minicab and that is why I have approved a major increase to the size of our team that targets touts and illegal activities,” said Mr Khan. At present, a tout has more chance of winning the lottery than being prosecuted by TfL for touting!

Perhaps the Mayor can explain to us all, how putting staff on the street with about as much power as a bus inspector (which most of these officers will be part time) is going to make passengers "safe".

Steve Burton, Transport for London’s director of enforcement and on-street operations, who's teams of compliance officers are sometimes seen, two days a week aimlessly walking round the west end added: “Illegal minicab activity not only poses a serious risk to passenger safety but undermines licensed, law abiding taxi and private hire drivers.” It's a shame then Steve that your COs have no power to do anything about rouge drivers who are not licensed by TfL!

Perhaps Steve Burton can explain how more of the same benign COs are going to make passengers safe? Last year 154 serious sexual assault including rapes in licensed private hire vehicles. And that's just the 10% that the Met police estimate reported the attacks 

He warned rogue minicab drivers flouting the law that they will be caught and “dealt with robustly”. (Yes but who by Steve, your officers have no power! And those warning letters you send out are a joke)

This expansion of TfL compliance was welcomed by the LTDA. More proof that this organisation hasn't got its finger on the pulse of what's really going on out there. 

Funding to pay for the new officers will come through changes to private hire operator licensing so that larger firms pay a greater share of the costs of enforcement.

Of course Uber have backed the extra officers, as this measure completely bypasses their illegal plying for hire MO.

Tom Elvidge, the company’s general manager for London, said; “It’s important that people only use a properly booked car from a licensed private hire operator.” Which is an amazing statement from a company that doesn't take bookings and is only available for immediate hire. Is Tom Elvidge advising customers to use other operators who actually do take proper phone bookings?

Transport for London, the Met and Westminster Council have been running Operation Neon since May to target rogue drivers at weekends, and in most Taxi drivers opinion, has been a complete waste of time and money.

So far, nearly 10,000 private hire drivers have been advised and moved on to keep roads clear for taxis but only on Friday  and Saturday. More than 5,000 were reported for not wearing their badge, not really zero tolerance, and nearly 500 for not having a badge and were stopped from working for the rest of the evening. (Go home....yeh ok....lol they must be quaking in their boots....not.)

Since this operation has been running, only 65 drivers have been "reported" (not convicted) for plying for hire offences. A group of well trained, warranted cab enforcement officers would be able to nick 65 touts over a weekend, as the problem is completely out of control. 

Westminster councils parking Marshals who sometimes accompany operation Neon officers have the best record and have issued nearly 3,000 parking tickets. 

Mr Khan has also pledged to clean up the capital’s taxi fleet to make it the “greenest in the world”. 

With a trade struggling financially, Khan and TfL wants us to invest the best park of £60k in an uncertain technology, which has added health risks to drivers that manufacturers and TfL are glossing over.

All taxis in London will from October 3 be required to accept card payments, including contactless. Unfortunately the implementation of this policy has been nothing short of scandalous. 

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