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[email protected] · October 6th 15, 12:09 AM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(JNugent) wrote:

On 05/10/2015 20:48, Neil Williams wrote:

On 2015-10-05 13:19:08 +0000, David Cantrell said:

TfL staff manage to do it at central London stations occasionally, so
there's no reason that their Cambridge equivalent couldn't, or that the
local taxi companies couldn't find people to do it for their drivers.

I thought the law was that the taxi companies could in fact not do it?
Not sure about the Council though.

The council is just a third party and could lawfully do it.

Whether they would is another matter.

In Cambridge the station forecourt taxi rank is not public highway. This
means the railway charges taxi drivers a tidy annual sum for access and
limits it to only some hackney carriages. Any activity with queues could
only happen with the co-operation of the railway company. I tried to get the
council to insist that the new rank being created in the current station
redevelopment would be public highway but this was successfully resisted by
the railway industry.

There has to be another taxi rank further from the station but on the public
highway to allow for the next time the railway company tries to raise the
charges excessively to a level the trade won't pay. Happened in BR days and
again 25 years later.

It stinks but the local authorities seem powerless to stop the scam.

--
Colin Rosenstiel