Addison Lee chairman John Griffin says the London 2012 Olympics will be “damaging” to his company – and potentially to the whole taxi and private hire industry.
The boss of the capital’s biggest private hire fleet operator said London’s roads would be gridlocked during the Olympics – and he urged Olympic spectators to take the Tube, adding that giving visitors priority over regular customers would be “business suicide”.
Griffin said the games would be more of a nuisance than an opportunity. “It won’t help our level of service,” he told the Financial Times. “And it won’t please our regular customers.” He said the taxi trade had been thrust on to the “front line” of Olympic transport, with officials hoping that taxis would hang around to cater for visitors when sports events ended each day.
But he said: “If we didn’t do a single [Olympics] job it wouldn’t bother me one bit. I’m not prepared to sacrifice the relationship I have with my customers for the benefit of someone coming from abroad to watch the events.” Addison Lee has 4,000 cars and makes about 25,000 journeys every day.
Griffin believes the 109-mile Olympic Route Network (ORN), complete with 35 miles of dedicated “ZiL lanes” that will only be accessible to cars carrying Olympics athletes, officials and dignitaries, will hurt the private hire trade, though black cabs will be less affected.
However, Steve McNamara, a spokesman for the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, believes the black cab trade will also suffer. “I don’t think it’s going be good for any taxi group,” he said. “London is going to be chaos city. We’re going to have lots and lots of closed roads, awful traffic and no work. It doesn’t get worse than that.”
Indeed, a survey by the LTDA, suggests that up to 40% of cabbies will go on holiday during the games. And Russell Hall, founder of taxi operator hailocab.com, fears taxi fares will increase four-fold because of the time spent in clogged traffic as a result of the ORN.
“Customers will be sent on lengthy diversions,” Hall said. “I don't see what the problem is with letting taxis use the lanes to get to the Olympic Park. If people want to get from central London, Heathrow or St Pancras to the Games I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to use the Games Lanes.”
Mark Bursa
