Welcome to the latest edition of The Cabby

Firstly we would like to wish you all a prosperous New Year and hope that you all had a Happy Christmas

It has been some time since our last edition and for this we apologise, we aim to produce The Cabby on a regular basis but due to other commitments with have failed to produce an edition for a number of months. We will endeavour to put this right and produce The Cabby on a regular basis.

We are still looking for contributors to this newsletter as I am sure that you are by now getting bored with my rantings, if you have anything that you would like to see included in The Cabby then please forward it to us.

The Public Carriage Office finally announced the conclusion to the review of the conditions of fitness and decided to retain the 25 foot turning circle. What this ultimately means is that the only vehicle to comply with the conditions of fitness is those produced by LTI namely the TXII and now the TX4, the likes of the Mercedes and Volkswagen produced by Jubilee Automotive and the Euro7 produced by Allied Vehicles sometimes referred to as alternative vehicles will not be licensed in London.

It seems that Gordon Brown has totally shafted all those of us that have taken the financial commitment and purchased our new Euro 4 TX4 London Taxis by raising the road tax to £400.00 per year, more information in this newsletter!

In the chancellors recent budget Gordon Brown announced that Vehicle Excise Duty, or Road Tax as we know it would be increased for the most polluting vehicles i.e. the 4x4 brigade would end up paying more road tax for their "Chelsea Tractors".

Most thought that this would only affect owners of large 4x4 vehicles. This is a totally misguided belief and has far wider implications especially for the taxi trade.

The new Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) rates are as follows:

Vehicles Registered before 01/03/2001

• £180.00 for 12 months

• £99.00 for 6 months

Vehicles Registered after 01/03/2001

• £205.00 for 12 months

• £112.75 for 6 months

Vehicles Registered after 23/03/2006

(Rates from 23/03/2007)

• £300.00 for 12 months

• £165.00 for 6 months

(Rates from 01/04/2008)

• £400.00 for 12 months

What this basically means is that older Fairways & TX1's will pay the normal rate of £180.00 per year.

Later TX1's and TXII's registered after 1st March 2001 will pay the higher rate of £205.00 per year.

Any TXII or TX4 registered after 23rd March 2006 will pay the higher rate of £300.00 per year in 2007 and £400.00 per year after 1st April 2008.

So those of us that have committed to the financial burden of purchasing a new taxi are now being penalised by this Government for running more environmentally friendly vehicles.

In fact the cars that the Chancellor aimed this ridiculous tax at are totally unaffected, if you run a 6 litre diesel engine gas guzzler that was registered before 01/03/2001 then you will still only be liable to pay the ordinary rate of £180.00 per year.

VED is banded with Band A being the lowest cost and Band F being the highest, in the last budget a new band was introduced which is Band G, any Taxi registered after 23rd March 2006 falls into this new higher Band G.

It now becomes cheaper to Tax a Coach with 53 seats than a London Taxi with 5 seats!

This means that the taxi owner will be £195.00 per year or £16.25 per month or £3.75 per week worse off, those of you that rent newer taxis may find that your weekly rent increases by around £5.00 per week.

This is a cost that the taxi trade should not have to pay, the taxi trade should be exempt from this totally unfair charge.

The Magical Taxi Tour

The Magical Taxi Tour takes place every year to Disneyland Paris. This years Magical Taxi Tour will leave Canary Wharf on Friday 5th October 2007 in a convoy of over 100 vehicles destined for Disneyland Pairs.

Supported by the Police, AA and The London Ambulance service over 200 seriously ill children will spend the time of their life in Disney.

All the money needed to fund this event is raised entirely by the Disney Committee of the Worshipful Company of Hackney Carriage Drivers.

The committee work hard every year to raise the considerable sum of money needed to stage this wonderful event, just to see the look on the faces of the children who are lucky enough to go us worth every penny that this trip costs. If you are interested in sponsoring a taxi or giving a donation to this very worthy cause then please contact 020 8281 9320

RAC and the Taxi Trade

Since our last edition it seems that the RAC have had a change of heart when it comes to covering taxis for breakdown cover, in fact they seem to be midway through an extensive advertising campaign  to attract both taxis and minicabs. We wonder what caused the change in direction for the RAC, was it the significant loss of members or the cynical may say that it was a deliberate marketing exercise.

Taxi Assist is the RAC's new offering to the taxi and minicab trades, some have suggested that it is just a way of obtaining more money from you for the same level of service that you once took for granted under your old personal membership.

The RAC publish on their website various levels of cover for various prices for example personal membership which includes roadside, recovery and home service will cost you £79.99, business cover which includes the same level of service will cost you £114.50 so how much will Taxi Assist cost you? well who knows! the RAC have decided not to publish the price for their service but we are led to believe that it is in the region of £150.00, maybe someone from the RAC would like to send us some information regarding the new service.

The Public Carriage Office cease to undertake any more taxi inspections as from 23rd February 2007. There will then be a week between the carriage ceasing tests and SGS starting their operation, this is to allow the PCO to clear up any outstanding stop note and reject notices.

Information regarding the new test stations and booking procedures seem to be very sketchy at present but we hope that the PCO will clarify matters within the next week or so.

At 7am this morning (Monday 19 February 2007), the Central London Congestion Charge Zone extended westwards, to cover most of the boroughs of Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster.

The scheme has been extended to the west. The extended zone now operates as one scheme, with the same rules, payment channels and discounts.

Transport for London can report that all monitoring systems are operating correctly, and payment channels to pay the £8 charge online, at pay stations and by text, as well as the call centre, are all up and running.

The Pay Next Day scheme means drivers will also be able to pay £10 until midnight on the following charging day.

The hours for the congestion charging scheme have now changed, operating from 7am to 6pm rather than 7am to 6.30pm.

We are currently running a good service on all Tube lines.

A significant package of measures to enhance bus services ahead of the western extension has been introduced, including extensions to bus routes, significant increases in frequency across the network and the introduction of an additional bus route from December 2006.

These have provided space for an additional 4,800 passengers travelling to inner West London from south, west and north London in the morning peak.

Malcolm Murray-Clark, director of Congestion Charging, believes considerable preparation by Transport for London has seen a smooth go-live process.

He said: 'The congestion charging scheme has now been operating for four years, and is a proven success.

'Since the introduction of the charge in 2003, traffic levels have been reduced in the central zone by 20 per cent, meaning that each day in 2006 there were almost 70,000 fewer vehicles entering the charging zone compared to the number that had been entering each day before charging began.

Three point risk
A recent survey revealed that the majority of people now consider mobile phones to be an essential part of modern life and that more people in the UK use mobile phones than wear wrist watches.

The same survey found that 90% of car and commercial vehicle drivers admit to making or receiving calls whilst driving and 75% of these have at some time held their phones whilst doing so.

Department of Transport statistics for 2005 reveal that 13 people were killed and 400 injured in crashes involving drivers using mobile phones; but independent experts maintain that, due to the difficulty of obtaining credible evidence, the true figure could be up to ten times higher.

In December 2003, the Government introduced legislation which imposed a fixed penalty of £30 on drivers caught using mobile phones whilst driving and considered not to be in a position to have proper control of their vehicles.

In the event, the new legislation had little affect and with offences running at a rate of 70,000 per annum, the Government has now decreed that from 27 February this year the illegal use of a mobile phone will automatically incur a £60 fine and three
penalty points.

The RoyaL Society for the Prevention of accidents (ROSPA) had campaigned for a total ban on the use of all mobile phones in vehicles, including hands-free systems. ROSPA maintained that using hands-free equipment whilst driving did not significantly
reduce risks, because the physical act of holding a phone poses less danger than the mental distraction, and divided attention, of taking part in a phone conversation at the same time as driving. However, the political fallout of imposing a total ban on an electorate which includes 20 million car owners, did, without doubt, have a part to play in the Government decision to reject the ROSPA recommendations!

The restriction on the use of hand held phones applies at all times when driving, except in the case of a genuine emergency. driving is defined as the vehicle being in motion, queuing in traffic or stopped at traffic lights.

The department of Transport is advising drivers to use handheld phones only when “safely parked”, but legal opinion suggests that the legislation implies that the engine must also be switched off, so it is likely that the precise definition of ‘parked’ will ultimately be determined by a test case in the high Court.

In the meantime, cab drivers will need to be particularly wary, because pulling over to make a call and then failing to switch off the engine could result in three points on their licence.

LTI launched the new TX4 back in November 2006. Powered by the 2.5 VM engine with a 5 speed electronically controlled automatic gearbox.

So far the new model has been well received by the trade and Mann & Overton London have taken an unprecedented number of orders.

The TX4 has had its problems the main one being the terrible squeal coming from the front brakes but a fix seems to be in the pipeline.

After nearly 12 years of having a dedicated team of night patrols in central London it seems that the AA have decided that things need to change. The night men who are known to many of us within the taxi trade and who to some of us have become very good friends are about to be taken off night duty after many years of loyal service to the AA.

We at The Cabby feel that this will be a loss, many of us have been helped by these night patrols who have times gone beyond the call of duty to get us back to work.

Electrical Problem
We had a Fairway taxi come into the workshops this week with a fuse that kept blowing. The fuse at fault as the one which worked the interior lights and the taxi meter. The fuse had literally melted and in doing so had melted the fuse box where the fuse was mounted. Further investigation revealed that had the driver not been alert enough to remove the fuse as quickly as he did then the taxi was real danger of catching fire.

The loom had been severely burnt and parts needed replacing. It transpired that the previous owner had given the taxi to his garage for the overhaul, apparently they had a problem with the electric windows. They rewired the positive to the windows by removing the fuse from the alarm wiring and sticking a spade connector into the inline fuse holder ultimately rendering the windows un-fused. Now the alarm feed was wired into the interior light feed as it does not require much power even when in alarmed state. The maximum voltage of the interior lighting wiring is about 10amps, so over time the electric windows had slowly burnt away at the loom.

I have never seen such a bodge job in all my time and I have seen quite a few, the garage who were responsible (and who shall remain nameless) even charged the previous owner for the work.

The bodge job required 6 hours of work to rectify all of the bad wiring.

Overhaul Time
We had a taxi in for its annual overhaul a couple of weeks ago, it was a 52 plate TXII with 163000 miles on the clock.

The engine bay of the vehicle was covered in engine oil and the driver admitted that since the engine started leaking oil in September he had been putting an average of 1 litre of oil in per week.

Consequently the taxi required the alternator, water pump, servo pump, belt and tensioner to be replaced on top of the general overhaul items ending in quite a hefty bill for the owner.

The moral of the story is not to leave everything until overhaul time, if something needs replacing then do it as when required, otherwise it could hit your pocket badly when it comes to that time of year.

If you have any garage horror stories then please let us know.

SGS Finally opened it's doors to take over Taxi Licensing tests from the PCO on Monday 2nd April 2007. This changeover has been in the pipeline for over 3 years and yet SGS were still not ready having only 2 of the 3 test centres open for business.

We were lucky (or unlucky) whichever way you want to look at it, to have the first taxi ever to go through the Tottenham Test Centre, we were also issued with the first reject.

The set up at the test centres is quite impressive with the whole procedure from the start of the test to the issue of the plate being computerised, this is great when it works but the computer system failed a few of the taxis going through for no apparent reason, this caused quite a problem as the system has no facility for the examiner to override a failure and make it a pass, although there is a facility to override a pass and fail the vehicle, this caused the staff at SGS to some head scratching as if the vehicle was already being presented for the second time the system required a payment of £107.00 to be made for a retest.

I represented the vehicle on the Tuesday for a 14:40 appointment and finally left Tottenham at 18:30 with a plate after the man from SGS found a work around the problem and issued the plates for the vehicle. I would like to thank John from SGS, Andy & Lloyd (2 ex PCO examiners) for all their help on Tuesday, without their help I would have left without a plate on a Taxi that had nothing wrong with it.

In conclusion I think that the system will work quite well once the initial problems have been ironed out and when SGS manage to open the Deptford branch which will release some of the pressure on the Tottenham Centre.

We are going to publish a list of incident hotspots in the newsletter. For instance if you know of any locations where taxi drivers have sustained attacks then please let us know.

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TfL have recently redesigned their website, the website has a cleaner  more modern feel to it. If you want to keep up to date with PCO notices then it is well worth a visit. The URL is www.tfl.gov.uk/pco