My name’s Louise Osbourne. I’m a licenced London Black Cab driver. I’ve been doing it 24 years now and every day is different. I hold a green badge, which is the centre of London, so we learned for our ‘knowledge’, our test, a six-mile radius of Charing Cross Station. Charing Cross Station [is] where they mark where somewhere is eight miles from London… So we know the streets and places of interest within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross station. You build up a topographical picture in your head and it took just over two and a half years of some classroom, and quite a lot on a moped with a little clipboard, so that you can stop and start and get down passageways, to see where everything is. So, it’s not just sit at home and look at a map and learn it: you have to physically go out and pound the streets on your moped to absorb it. And then, when you’re tested, it’s a series of oral tests and you’re tested every two months in the beginning and they might ask you four or five questions to get from A to B. You’ve got to do it in the shortest distance, which we call ‘on the cotton’, which is if you put a piece of cotton from A to B, we’ve got to go as close to that cotton line as physical possible with the streets. And then they test you two months later and it goes on like that until they feel that you’re ready for the next step, then it’s every month, then its every three weeks, then two weeks, and if you pass that bit then you have to do a driving test and then you also have to gain a knowledge of the suburbs going out to the airports or studios, or any places that you might be asked to go in the outer circle of London. And then you’re ready and they give you your little green badge and off you go!
First of all London is my city, I was born at Hyde Park Corner and I love London, and you know I love driving. That was, I thought, a combination of the two things, and also I really like meeting people so that’s happening day to day. [Since then], there’s definitely more traffic, but sometimes it’s not always easy to monitor it when you’re in it … because it builds up under your nose without you realising. I think it’s more, maybe when people get in the back of the cab and they haven’t been to London for a bit they go: ‘Oh my God, look at the traffic – isn’t it bad’. So, yes, there’s definitely more traffic. Maybe we’ve had a bit more of a squeeze on some of the roads, with bigger, wider pavements, sometimes some bus stops have been set out rather than in because maybe, if the bus pulls in, it won’t be allowed to pull back out! And, you know, we’ve had segregated cycle lanes for the protection of cyclists which is needed, but maybe we’re just running out of space for all the things that want to be there. It’s quite sad to hear that, sometimes, there might be one parcel in a van, because someone had to have it that next two hours. Everybody wants things instantly.
I think a lot of people don’t drive in London now. It’s not very pleasant. I think most of the people drive because they have to with their van for their tools. But also now a lot of the time we pick up a lot of trade people as well, they can’t get parked at the jobs they go to, the parking [costs] a fortune, they don’t want to drive, so maybe you’ll pick them up with their paint or their drills, and then you take them to the job and then they haven’t got the worry or the hassle of running outside for the traffic warden coming. So, in those sorts of instances, maybe we are helping to sort of take people off of the road. But yes, and then there is a lot of people who love their cars and will be in it at all costs, to everything, because they love it too much! And they’ve got all their gadgets and home comforts around them so they’re not worried about how long it takes…
It will be getting worse because there’s certain areas more in the City and maybe even around … Holborn … that are really heavily congested all the time. So that is a definite reason that the air will be worse. And there’s no avoiding it in driving around in a different place because there’s somebody else there as well. And, you know, we sit in the middle of the road all day long, so we want the air to be better, we want the traffic to move better, but how you go about that? There’s a lot of tweaks that could probably help it, but are people willing to do that? And then the other, that when people come into London and the traffic moves faster, then they’ll think: ‘Aha! Maybe I’ll drive next time.’ So, [there is a] downside, if you see what I mean.
Take deliveries. They can sometimes narrow the roads even more. It’s probably very difficult for them to stick to certain hours but it might be more possible to have cut out more loading bays, even if its 25 metres away from the delivery point. And have traffic wardens who aren’t purposefully giving tickets, who are monitoring. The next lorry’s waiting round the corner, out of the way of traffic and then, when they go, he’s in the next spot. A bit more traffic management on the ground like that, a bit more common sense. I mean quite often also I’ll see somebody stop and park opposite another vehicle and now we’re down to one lane, whereas if they had staggered their parking, we still would’ve been able to get through… Everybody says people should have their deliveries done by 6 o’clock in the morning. Well, it ain’t gonna happen, because for instance, there’s nobody at the premises to take that in. Like … pubs, some of them are lock-up-and-leave. There’s not people living above the shop any more… What do we want? Do we want to fine everybody for their deliveries? What’s the purpose? You ask traffic wardens and they say their helping to move the traffic along. I find that hard to believe. Yes they’re probably a deterrent for some people stopping, but there are some people who have to stop so why can’t we let them, even if they were to pay into a scheme. I mean if they’re getting thousand-odd pounds in their companies parking tickets a month, I’m sure they’d be willing to pay a percentage into a parking scheme.
We’ve seen the new prototype [electric] taxi. It’s all being tested; it’s all ready to go. We’re not quite sure about the final things about how far you can go on the battery, but it’s coming out next year, which is great… But I live in a flat, and I cannot throw a lead out of my window so, as much as I’d like to have one, and be part of it, it’s a very, very expensive £56,000, and the practicalities of it and the infrastructure hasn’t caught up. We’ve been in trouble with our air quality for a long time so the taxi trades at least have tried to head towards addressing that, but if there isn’t enough charging points, it’s not even a … hybrid, which switches over to [petrol] if your battery runs to low… you can keep going …
What is a worry really is that electric vehicle still has really a 15-year age limit. So, to me that’s not very environmentally friendly. Obviously, they’re running a business, so if they sell you one taxi that lasts a lifetime where are you coming back to? But you have to work out the economics of it because most people are a third down in their takings … We went from 40,000 minicabs to about 120,000 in about four years, and it’s still going up. We’re taking less money, are we prepared to invest in that high price tag for… when we see the returns on it? Everybody wants cleaner air, you can’t not want cleaner air, but … its who’s paying for it? We’re paying for it with our health. There was a suggestion, one of the cab drivers said that, if the government bought these electric cabs and funded them to the drivers, the fines for the air quality would come down … and it’s about looking at the whole picture and the bigger picture. It’s difficult really because the whole government’s in turmoil, you don’t know how long they’re going to be here, so this is really … a long-term investment and, if we had a bit more stability there, then it might fall into place a bit more…
They’re not selling any more new diesel cabs after this year, so we’re making steps in the cab world to get there. It would be great if everybody could sort out, within two or three years, an electric vehicle with the infrastructure… I mean I know that they’re telling us because they’re trying to sell it, that we’re going to save hundreds [of pounds] in diesel…
The segregated cycle routes are really good because I see some cyclists and I’m not sure whether they’re going to get home the way they’re cycling and its difficult because you’ve got a cross section of different cyclists and you’ve got some really great ones who’ve got the high vis, no headphones so they can hear what’s going on and they stop at red traffic lights and don’t run over pedestrians, and you know you go downwards from there really. It’s difficult because we’re all fighting over the same bit of road… If you’ve got a system that they’ve modelled on Copenhagen or Amsterdam or something, maybe people are a bit more law-abiding in those places, whereas, here, we want to get there before we’ve left…
The [monitor in my cab] didn’t run smoothly the first day I did it. It stopped, so I had to do it a second day and charge it, so I think they weren’t quite sure where I was where it spiked and where it didn’t, but I sort of ran them through in my head of the day that I’d had and the journeys. I live out in Shepherds Bush and I started work about 7 o’clock in the morning and then I got sort of closer into the sort of West End, Holborn, inner city, and that’s when it starts to spike, so obviously bigger spikes, more congestions of traffic and I suppose the 9 o’clock time … – we have a slow lots of hours rather than the rush hour – but it does obviously build up later… Shepherd’s Bush is not that far out, but it definitely went up higher…
Where there is space, maybe have more smaller taxi ranks, like a couple of cab ranks and that so we can wait there. I mean we do quite a lot of stuff on the apps now so we drive to people’s houses, when I get to people’s houses. I always ring them to tell them I’m outside and they often say I’ll be right down and then, five minutes later, they’re still on their way down so I tell them when they get in the cabs, I ring you up not to hurry you along, I just need to know because then I can switch off my engine. It’s probably a natural reaction: ‘I’m just coming, I’m just coming!’ you know, a bit aggressive and I’m like, it’s alright I can just turn my engine off, because that’s not very nice outside people’s houses …
We do drive around. I think most people head towards somewhere where they might be able to rank up and there would be the possibility of a job, I suppose the nature of its changed a bit, so lots of people do stop. I mean, in this weather everyone wants to hail a cab but, there’s a lot more people, I suppose the younger generation, who are all about their phones and they like the idea that: ‘Oh, my cars coming!’. They can follow you on the sat-nav thing to see where you are and that you’re here, so they could stand out on the street and see three or four cabs come past, but they’re waiting for the one on the app…