Taxi drivers have accused Sadiq Khan of causing London to come to a complete halt at Christmas, claiming that the capital is "grinding to a halt" due to changes in road layouts.
It was "increasingly difficult" to navigate the capital throughout the Christmas period, according to taxi drivers, due to a "perfect storm" of road construction, traffic changes, and planning decisions.
Delivery vans, office parties, and holiday shopping trips add to London's already one of the slowest motor vehicle speeds in the world over the Christmas season.
The Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association (LTDA) said this week that “cabbies working this Christmas are experiencing some of the worst traffic conditions ever encountered in the capital”, blaming “random closures and road layout changes elsewhere” leading to “areas of London are grinding to a halt”.
Representatives of the LTDA resorted to handing out flyers to passengers waiting for journeys at Euston station this week, apologising for the “outrageous” delays that they say have left people waiting an hour for a taxi.
The association said redesigned junctions made to accommodate bike lanes and to limit traffic means London’s road network has been left without flexibility to cope when roadworks are carried out.
Steve McNamara, the LTDA’s general secretary, said: “London’s licensed taxi drivers are finding it increasingly difficult to get around the capital thanks to a perfect storm of poor traffic management and planning decisions, badly planned roadworks and a lack of joined up thinking by the London Boroughs and Transport for London (TfL).
“Cabbies are experiencing long delays, struggling to access key locations and being left unable to provide an efficient and effective service to the many passengers, who rely on taxis to get safely from A to B. Taxi drivers and our passengers are understandably frustrated. We need urgent action from transport planners to help us do our jobs and get people where they need to be this Christmas.
“We have repeatedly raised concerns with decision makers across London about the impact their decisions are having, highlighting where changes need to be made to keep London moving, but this seems to be falling on deaf ears.”
Euston’s taxi rank was moved earlier in the year to accommodate the future High Speed 2 terminus at the station but drivers say TfL ignored concerns about the lack of entrances.
Drivers have been forbidden from turning off the main road to the rank since 2020, when a bike lane was put in place to encourage cycling during the pandemic. While the lane was removed due to a backlash about the congestion caused, it had failed to reinstate previous turning permissions, leaving taxi drivers forced to crawl through traffic to access the junction from the opposite direction.
Mr McNamara said: “Londoners and visitors to our great city are being disrupted and let down by poor decision making and it’s simply not good enough.”
He added that road closures around Park Lane have led the thoroughfare to take up to an hour to drive through.
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