Addison Lee drivers told to defy bus lane law (and to just say SMIDSY)

I kind of support this thing. Not because minicabs should be in bus lanes, but because black cabs shouldn't be.

It seems like the likely scenario is that Addisson Lee will win in court, which means that anyone could register as a private hire car and get a sticker that allows them to drive in the bus lanes. So the only reasonable response is to kick black cabs out of them. Which evens the black cab/minicab playing field somewhat.

One of the main reasons why black cabs are allowed in bus lanes is because they can be hailed in the street and can pick up passengers. While much of Central London doesn't have bus lanes, it would be unworkable with their current license to 'kick them out' of bus lanes. If Addison Lee won in court (which I doubt, as their argument is just silly, but IANAL--perhaps you have a better grasp of the legal niceties than I have), the outcome would most definitely not be that black cabs would be 'kicked out' of bus lanes. At best, access to bus lanes might be restricted to picking up and setting down, which would be relatively difficult, if not impossible, to enforce.

With a tinfoil hat on, it's not impossible that Boris wants taxis out of the bus lanes so that he can report that buses are now x% faster. This is a neat excuse to do that without incurring the wrath of the cabbies.

Conservative Party policy direction has generally been against bus lanes, although they obviously realise that they can't just attack bus priority in London, as that would not work politically. The Mayor affirmed as much in 'Way to Go' (the one with the fixie riders on the cover), which is interesting because of the rather strange way in which he sums up his assessment of the policy: 'The question now is not how to demolish that policy, but how to develop and improve it.' Who even asked the question about demolishing it?

Anyway, a much more likely scenario would be a general reduction in bus lanes, using such a court verdict as a crutch. However, that's not on the cards, either.