17/01/2018

London Black Cabs launch new protests against Uber

This week, cabbies across London led by the Independent Taxi Alliance—‘to highlight corruption through legitimate protest’—will be staging a series of demonstrations against Uber’s continued operations in the city, despite TfL revoking their ride-hire license in September 2017.

From Monday afternoon and into early evening, hundreds of black cabs completely locked down the hectic Elephant and Castle roundabout, effecting traffic delays across the capital, seizing up busy bus routes and leaving many commuters stranded.

There were further protests yesterday at Marble Arch and today at Parliament Square, with a final yet-to-be announced protest planned for Friday.

Uber are in the process of appealing TfL’s revocation of their London license, and a TfL spokesperson said: ‘The law stipulates that operators can continue [to work in the city] until any appeals process is exhausted. We urge the organisers to call the protests off’.

However, this is complicated by the lengthiness that appeal processes can regularly take. Last October, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said that the process to remove Uber from the city could ‘go on for a number of years’.

As demonstrations mount, the protest organisers called TfL’s decision ‘unacceptable’ and accused their failure to respond to the protests of putting public safety at risk.

We’ll keep covering this story as it unfolds. Check back with the Taxi Centre blog for more.