Along with Big Ben, red double-decker buses, and the pigeons that lived in Trafalgar Square until Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, decided to banish them, the black cab is one of the most recognizable symbols of the capital. But London's cabbies are worried that a perverse regulation may drive them off the streets. The wrangle involves allegations of monopoly dealing, pits the claims of
safety against environmentalism, and highlights the perils of devolution. The regulation is not the brainchild of some crazed European bureaucrat, but anancient domestic one.
London's first recorded cab journey took place in 1588. The requirement for cabbies to know the capital like the back of their hands - or, to give the rite its proper title, to "do the knowledge" - derives from the Great Exhibition of 1851, when there were widespread complaints about ignorant drivers. The first cab with an internal combustion engine hit London's streets in 1903.
The regulations issued by the Public Carriage Office (established in 1850, but now under the auspices of the mayor's Transport for London) state that cabs must be able to perform a u-turn in a space not more than 8,535m wide. Transport for London says that the rule ensures the necessary manoeuvrability, and guarantees that passengers can hail a cab from the wrong side of the road.
But critics say that other towns have modernised their regulations, and that the rule should go the same way as the requirement for Hackney carriages to carry a bale of hay.
London's cabbies must hope that the mayor has more affection for the black cab than he was shown to pigeons.
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