TfL told to look into a London licensing regime for dockless cycle hire and driverless buses for the capital

OBike is one of a flurry of dockless cycle hire schemes which launched in London last year (Source: Getty)

Transport for London (TfL) and mayor Sadiq Khan have been told to look into a London-wide licensing system for dockless cycle hire in a new report from the London Assembly Transport Committee.

The report weighs up how the capital's transport body is preparing for the development of new technology in the transport sector, and calls for more research into driverless buses in London and a regulatory regime for "demand-responsive bus services" too.

The report said:

There have been recent failures in London's preparations for innovative transport services, notably the rapid growth of private hire operator Uberand the disruptive launch of dockless cycle hire service oBike.

OBike's launch last July did not go down well with councils, which said the firm had not consulted them before a raft of bikes was suddenly left obstructing footpaths and creating potential hazards. 

This has not dampened rising interest in dockless cycle hire services operated through apps in the capital though, with Ofo, Mobike and Urbo all cropping up. 

TfL launched a code of practice in September 2017, which the Committee welcomed, but said this could go further. The report calls for the number of operators to be limited "to allow for competition, but avoiding an excessive number of unused bikes being left to clutter pavements and roads".

Keith Prince, chairman of the London Assembly Transport Committee, said: "Autonomous vehicles could make roads safer. Dockless bikes could spread the benefits of cycling to the whole city and demand-responsive buses could give people a public transport service tailored to their needs.

"The opportunity to improve mobility for millions of Londoners is here but it will require proper planning, transparency and accountability, as well as cooperation with government, boroughs and development companies."

Other recommendations made in the report include considering the development and impact of driverless buses on London, with a review to be carried out in the next year, and further exploring the likely scale and impact of commercial drone use in the capital. 

The Committee says the mayor and TfL should also engage in discussions with the government, boroughs and operators to start developing a "new regulatory regime" for demand-responsive bus services. These should include requirements to serve areas with less dense public transport coverage, and accessibility for older and disabled passengers. 

Transport app Citymapper launched its own bus route last year, while Ford has also brought its Chariot commuter shuttle bus service to the capital across four routes.

Members of the GLA are also keen that TfL seek reciprocal agreements with app developers, so data produced by apps which are powered by underlying TfL data is then shared back with the organisation too. 

Michael Hurwitz, director of transport innovation at TfL, said:

"This report outlines the challenges that all cities across the UK, including London, face when considering how transport will operate in the future. We work with a wide range of tech companies around the world to support and learn from innovation that could improve transport across London.

“As part of the mayor’s Transport Strategy, many of these elements are already being considered and TfL is involved in a number of pilots and initiatives to help ensure that any introduction of new technology such as autonomous vehicles and drones is safe, environmentally-friendly and consistent with our focus on walking, cycling and green public transport," he added

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EXCLUSIVE : In The Wake Of A Woefully Inadequate Licensing Authority WeNow Have Inept Heathrow Rank Agents.

A Taxi driver has taped this message onto the canteen door at Heathrow airport feeder park (Lutheran style), asking other drivers to join him in action against the airports agents.

The London taxi driver is allegedly taking Apcoa Parking Uk Ltd (who are the agency in charge of running the feeder park and ranks at Heathrow) to the small claims court.

The driver is sueing APCOA for loss of earnings due to their ineptitude during the recent snow falls. 

It's claimed that on the 10th December and the morning of the 11th December 2017, due to snow/slush hundreds of flights were cancelled, massive queues formed on the terminal 5 taxi rank. But hundreds of vacant Taxis were kept waiting in the feeder park. 

Passengers, many elderly or with children were kept waiting for up to 3hrs in the queue, quite unnecessarily. 

Photographs (now submitted as evidence) were taken of long queues along with Videos and Audio recordings of customer complaints. 

It wasn't until 3am that the demand was fulfilled.

The claimant alleges he was kept back and claims to have lost around £70 on two occasions. The driver also claims that his reputation has been damaged by this incident. 

Photographs were made of the hundreds of Taxis held back in the feeder park by Heathrow's agents. Complaints have been made to APCOA but widely ignored. 

The claimant is alleging negligence and is claiming £240 plus £25 court fee. He is also making a claim for interest on the amount under section 69 of the county courts act of 1984, up until judgement is made. 

Question that needs answering :

Did the order to hold back the Taxis come from third party interests?

Passengers in the queue were being told to get the Heathrow Express, or jump on the Piccadilly line.

Not the first time our business has been ferreted away by interested third parties....we all remember the 24hr travel passes that were issued with tickets to the Olympic park back in 2012! 

TAXI LEAKS EXTRA BIT

Taxi Leaks editor has also received a letter of complaint (below in full and unedited) from one of our regular readers.

Dated 7 February 2018 at 12:32:07 GMT

To: taxi.complaints@apcoa.com

Subject: Physical and verbal assault by your staff

06/feb/2018

21:41

Terminal 5 rank 

Dear Alison Crathorne

Just had a run in last night with a rank person (RP) on terminal 5 

Had a girl come up wanting fix price 2 Hilton term 5 

Said no thanks to RP wile he went down rank she asked me why ?

Told her why £25-£30 that I don’t need the argument that always happens at that hotel on short journey big price 

She only wanted to pay £10 ?

She walked.

Next job RP says “he won’t do it ?” Sneering and pointing towards me ?

He wouldn't tell me where this fixed price job was going & went straight to another taxi bypassing me ?

I explained to him that the point Taxi (me) has the right of refusal for fixed price if outside the met and that he had to tell me where it was going. 

He told me to “f@@k off you c@@t !” in front of customer 

I went to the other RP to asked him to come out of the box and witness what is going on !

While this was going on I saw him (1st RP) put his camera on as before it wasn't on him, just sitting on a trolly !

I asked their names, as I was going to make a official complaint, but they both refused, acting like children.

I went back to my Taxi, got my phone and told them as the refused to give names I would photo them so they could be identified later.

As I was trying to get a picture of there face, the childish behaviour continued.

It was then that the 1st RP, physically slapped my hand so hard it knocked my phone to the floor (which was obviously his intention) to stop me filming him or break my phone and then called me a something else very rude. The second RP said quote 

“oh shit ! that’s not good !”

The driver behind me witness it all!

and was just as disgusted as me with your staff actions. I have his phone number if it is needed.

As I have been physically & verbally assaulted by your staff, I made a point to speak to someone last night that claimed to be “the manager!”

She said she would go straight to terminal 5 to collect the camera data.

Did that happen ?

If so, I want a copy.

Don’t your employees have to have their cameras on at all times ?

As this is now time sensitive, depending on your reaction and your actions in this matter, I will give you 24 hours to confirm receipt of this complaint  and to get things moving ? 

Please phone me asap, as no manager is in today ? 

There is a surprise ?never is (According to your staff in the cabin at 11:00am).

I will be personally very upset if I find this childish person working on any rank till you sort this matter out with me personally.

I want to get police involved, but have been asked to let you try to do the right thing ?

I know there is a code of conduct for Taxi drivers at Heathrow ....What about your staff ?

I will not hesitate to splash this all over the internet 

all unions/orgs have also been informed.

I want a copy of your complaint procedure!

Looking forward to see what you have to say for yourself.

We now wait for APCOA's reply.

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Charity Commission Warns Garden Bridge Trust Over Failing To File Accounts

Back in January Taxi Leaks posted an article in regards to the Garden Bridge Trust refusing to release minute of meetings. 

We can now reveal that the Garden Bridge Trust has been warned it could face ‘regulatory action’ from the Charities Commission after missing the deadline to file its 2017 accounts 

The trust is under intense scrutiny as it attempts to wind up its operations after spending almost £50 million of public money on the cancelled and unbuilt Garden Bridge. It had been due to file end-of-year accounts on 31 January.

The charity is also continuing to refusing to comply with repeated requests from its public-sector sponsor Transport for London (TfL) for records of its meetings, despite demands from the organisation’s legal team, the AJ understands.

A spokesperson for the Charities Commission said: ‘The Garden Bridge Trust, which is in the process of winding up, has informed us it will be late filing its accounts for the financial year 2017.

‘Filing accounts is a legal requirement for all registered charities and the commission will consider regulatory action if the delay is significant. 

The public rightly expects charities to be transparent about their financial activity, so filing on time is key to running a charity properly.’

Responding to the latest news, London mayor Sadiq Khan once again hit out at the trust, saying that Londoners deserved ‘full transparency’.

A spokesperson for the mayor said: 

‘That is why he commissioned Dame Margaret Hodge’s independent review of the project, and why TfL’s legal team continues to seek access to the minutes from the Garden Bridge Trust board meetings.

‘He remains angry that London taxpayers have lost millions of pounds on a project, backed by the previous mayor, that has amounted to nothing.’

Khan’s stance was backed by Labour MP for Vauxhall Kate Hoey, a persistent critic of the project.

‘It is concerning that the Garden Bridge Trust has failed to file accounts,’ she said. ‘I am pleased that the Charity Commission has now said that they will hold the trust to account.

‘The trust has up to now managed to avoid any transparency and this must be rectified so that the public know the truth about its accounts and its abortive attempt to build a bridge.’

When the scheme was finally shelved last summer, the budget for the Thomas Heatherwick-designed crossing was estimated to be more than £200 million. 

The Garden Bridge Trust was unavailable for comment.

Questions need to be asked:

What’s happened to the £50m?

Boris Johnson’s chief transport advisor, Isabel Dedring, is leaving City Hall to take up a new role with design and engineering group Arup.

London’s Transport Commissioner, Mike Brown MVO said: “Isabel has done a great job in the Mayor’s office. 

But why did Isabel Dedring quite her job as Deputy Mayor in London (in her words, the best job in the world) and join the firm contracted to build the Garden Bridge?

Margaret Hodge  MP pressed Dedring on who had pushed for the appointment of Heatherwick and Arup, and Dedring replied: ‘I didn’t know Arup from a hole in the wall so I wouldn’t care whether they won it or didn’t win it or whatever … City Hall wouldn’t care who designed the bridge.’

Hodge replied: ‘But somebody did. Somebody did.’

When Hodge pointed out that Arup had earned between £8 million and £9 million from the contract by April 2015, Dedring replied: ‘I know, but in the grand scheme of TfL’s budget, which is £10 billion a year, it’s quite small. I agree with you but I’m just saying, that’s a fact.’

On the subject of the alleged conflict-of-interest over both her and former TfL head of planning Richard de Cani going to work for Arup, Dedring told Hodge this was ‘disconcerting for me personally but, it’s also bad for us corporately.’

She added that Arup has a £1billion turnover, saying: ‘The idea that somehow they would waste this extraordinary amount of money on me and Richard in exchange for what for them is a very small contract is absurd, apart from anything else.’

Hodge also pressed Dedring on what constraints should have been placed on the Garden Bridge Trust in terms of pre-construction spending. She asked who would have scrutinised this in order to protect the public purse.

Dedring replied: ‘Nobody really’, prompting Hodge to reply: ‘Jesus.’

Oh what a tangled web we weave.... and all that jazz  

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London To Reclassify The Toyota Prius As A Polluter ..... By Gerald Coba.

A change in the way CO2 levels are calculated means new Toyota Prius owners will have to pay the London Congestion Charge

New buyers of the Toyota Priushybrid will no longer be exempt from the London Congestion Charge, after a change in the way its carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are measured moved its official output above the 75g/km exemption threshold.

While current Prius owners won’t be affected by the change, anyone who purchased a new Prius from 1 February 2018 will find their car judged against updated criteria, meaning they will have having to pay the capital’s £11.50 Congestion Charge.

The Prius used to officially produce 70g/km of CO2 when running on 15-inch wheels. This made it a favourite of private hire owners, as they could drive into London while escaping the Congestion Charge. But that figure has now increased to 78g/km, while CO2 levels for a Prius running on 17-inch alloys have increased from 76 to 82g/km.

The rise has come because Toyota is switching the measure it uses to gauge the Prius’ CO2 levels from NEDC to NEDC-equivalent; the latter test was designed to precede the switch from NEDC to new WLTP testing criteria in 2019, and is considered a halfway house between the two measures.

Vehicle excise duty, commonly known as road tax, has also increased for those buying a new Prius: the first-year fee for models with 15-inch alloy wheels has increased from £15 to £90. Perhaps more significantly, Benefit-in-Kind (BiK) rates for business users of the same car have risen from 13 to 17 per cent.

While the Prius Plug-In is also likely to be measured against NEDC-equivalent criteria soon, its lower CO2 emissions of 22g/km (under outgoing NEDC rules) make it highly unlikely its emissions will rise above the 75g/km Congestion Charge exemption threshold.

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London To Re-Classify Toyota Prius As A Polluter

A change in the way CO2 levels are calculated means new Toyota Prius owners will have to pay the London Congestion Charge

New buyers of the Toyota Priushybrid will no longer be exempt from the London Congestion Charge, after a change in the way its carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are measured moved its official output above the 75g/km exemption threshold.

While current Prius owners won’t be affected by the change, anyone who purchased a new Prius from 1 February 2018 will find their car judged against updated criteria, meaning they will have having to pay the capital’s £11.50 Congestion Charge.

The Prius used to officially produce 70g/km of CO2 when running on 15-inch wheels. This made it a favourite of private hire owners, as they could drive into London while escaping the Congestion Charge. But that figure has now increased to 78g/km, while CO2 levels for a Prius running on 17-inch alloys have increased from 76 to 82g/km.

The rise has come because Toyota is switching the measure it uses to gauge the Prius’ CO2 levels from NEDC to NEDC-equivalent; the latter test was designed to precede the switch from NEDC to new WLTP testing criteria in 2019, and is considered a halfway house between the two measures.

Vehicle excise duty, commonly known as road tax, has also increased for those buying a new Prius: the first-year fee for models with 15-inch alloy wheels has increased from £15 to £90. Perhaps more significantly, Benefit-in-Kind (BiK) rates for business users of the same car have risen from 13 to 17 per cent.

While the Prius Plug-In is also likely to be measured against NEDC-equivalent criteria soon, its lower CO2 emissions of 22g/km (under outgoing NEDC rules) make it highly unlikely its emissions will rise above the 75g/km Congestion Charge exemption threshold.

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Sadiq Khan Disguising The Truth That Cycle Lanes Are Directly Adding To London's Air Pollution

    

TfL are now consulting on the next stage of the Mayor, Sadiq Khan’s plan to help tackle London’s toxic air pollution, which contributes to thousands of early deaths in our city each year. Although if he was serious about Londoners health, he would be removing the congestion causing CSH segregated cycle lanes and not expanding the program!

You can have your say (all though it won't make a blind bit of difference as they've already made their minds up, but it looks good on paper) 

visit tfl.gov.uk/airquality-consultation 

From 8 April 2019, the Mayor is (not may, subject to consultation) introducing the Ultra Low Emission Zone in central London, replacing the T-Charge with an even tighter emission standards for diesel vehicles. There will also be new Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle (PHV) licencing requirements from 2018.  It's all about the money.....follow the money!

TfL are not consulting on the Taxi and private hire licensing requirements, announced by the Mayor earlier this year. At least they're honest here....your opinion not welcome.

Find out how you are affected click here

 

To help reduce toxic emissions in London caused by congestion as a direct result of the segregated cycle lanes, the Mayor is also now proposing to:

 • Extend tighter emissions standards to the whole of London for lorries, buses and other heavy goods vehicles only in 2020

 • Expand the ULEZ for all vehicles including cars, vans, motorbikes and minibuses up to the North and South circular roads in 2021

 

This will affect electric Taxis use of their petrol generator which tips up battery power!

Plus hybrids are no longer seen as clean vehicles and will be charged accordingly !

This consultation ends on 28 February 2018, although TfL and the Mayor have already made their minds up what they are going to do!

As with all their other consultations, this one will make no difference to their current plans.  

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Even More Road Works On The Way : Smart Cats Eyes To Be Introduced To Roundabouts

Everything to do with the roads seems to be getting the ‘smart’ treatment of late – smart motorways, smart cars. Now cats eyes are the latest part of the road network to get the smart treatment with the introduction of smart cat’s eyes, which are being tested in collision hotspots to try and cut down on the number of accidents.

Intelligent cat’s eyes

The new intelligent cat’s eyes will light up in response to changing traffic lights and make major roundabouts look more like airport runways. It is the first time they are being considered for use in this way and are aimed at improving road safety, according to Highways England.

Some 170 of them are being used on Switch Island in Merseyside where the M57, M58 and three A roads all come together, as part of a £3 million project to improve the area. These new ‘road studs’ will be used to help 90,000 motorists manage the confusion of roundabouts. Cables will be laid beneath the road surface to connect the studs to the traffic lights via an automatic controller unit.

Cats eyes in action

When the traffic light turns green, the LED lights will be used to separate the lanes for the flow of traffic. This helps stop drivers crossing the white lines as they manage their way around the multiple exit roundabout.

The provider of the system, Clearview Intelligence, says that the studs are visible around 1,000 metres away and have already proven to reduce accidents in locations around the country where they are being used. In fact, collisions at some of the junctions have been reduced by up to 50%, the company said.

The system is already in use in Hindhead Tunnel, in Surrey, to help guide drivers through the tunnel. The A2-A20 junction in Kent along with the A41 in the Wirral and the Sheriffhall roundabout in Edinburgh have also been fitted with them, to help improve safety. Highways England are aiming for improved journeys and better safety for drivers with the new systems.

Runway roads

The idea of creating runway style roads is part of the government’s program of congestion relief which is due to start this month and has £220 million in funding. It is expected to take around 12 months to complete, in the Merseyside site, and vastly improve the situation – with 49 accidents in the last two years, it averages one every fortnight.

New traffic lights will also be installed to work with the smart road studs, set at a higher location so HGV and bus drivers can see them easier.

Cats eyes or road studs?

You may also notice another change taking place – cats eyes have undergone a rebranding and are now being called road studs. The reason for this is twofold, both quite amusing for drivers. Firstly, tourists are confused by the term and don’t understand warning signs such as ‘warning cat’s eyes removed’ when driving around the UK.

The other reason is that children were worried as they thought they were real cat’s eyes being embedded in the roads – hands up if you remember thinking that when you were a kid?

Most of us probably did because cats eyes have been around that long. The first ones were made back in 1933 by a man called Percy Shaw. He was driving along a West Yorkshire road and saw his lights reflected in the eyes of a cat walking alongside the road. He instantly realised their potential for road safety and came up with the device we are all familiar with. Cats eyes have been noted as one of the top 10 most iconic designs that the UK has ever created!

So, cat’s eyes are being renamed as road studs and smart road studs to help tourists feel more at ease on UK roads, and to stop children having sleepless nights over the mistreated cats! However, for most of us, they will remain cat’s eyes, no matter how smart they become.

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