Skip to main content

Uber granted 15-month trial to operate in London

Uber is now operating in London, UK, on a 15-month licence grant following a decision by Westminster Magistrates Court. The move follows Transport for London’s (TfL’s) refusal to renew the company’s licence in 2017. Chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot deemed Uber as ‘fit and proper’ and ordered the company to pay TfL’s legal costs of £425,000. The ride-hailing firm claims it has now made substantial changes by replacing senior management.
June 27, 2018 Read time: 2 mins
8336 Uber is now operating in London, UK, on a 15-month licence grant following a decision by Westminster Magistrates Court. The move follows 1466 Transport for London’s (TfL’s) refusal to renew the company’s licence in 2017.


Chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot deemed Uber as ‘fit and proper’ and ordered the company to pay TfL’s legal costs of £425,000.

The ride-hailing firm claims it has now made substantial changes by replacing senior management.

The decision has not been welcomed by consumer group SumOfUs. Campaigner Eoin Dubsky says: "The bottom line is that Uber remains a shady corporation and shouldn’t have been granted a new licence until it can show drivers are treated fairly.”

In a statement, Caroline Pidgeon, chair of the London Assembly’s transport committee, says court action has forced Uber to improve its working practices and TfL must ensure the conditions of the renewed licence are enforced.

“The safety of Londoners must come first and we will be keeping a close eye on the way Uber operates,” Pidgeon adds.

UTC

Related Content

  • November 14, 2017
    West Midlands pilots the UK’s first MaaS
    Mobility-as-a-Service is being piloted in the UK’s second largest metropolitan area and will shortly be opened to the travelling public. A fully operational Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) offering is being piloted in the West Midlands region of the UK. Covering seven local authorities which make up the West Midlands metropolitan area and population of 2.8 million, the service is being provided through a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Transport for West Midlands (TfWM), Finnish company MaaS Global
  • December 17, 2014
    Smart parking at London Underground
    Transport for London (TfL) is to implement a ‘smart parking’ system at 31 of its off-street car parks that support key locations across the London Underground network. 1,500 of Smart Parking’s RFID-equipped SmartEye vehicle detection sensors, linked via SmartLink data transmitters into the company’s SmartRep management application, will be installed across TfL’s off-street car park network. The five-year agreement, which will include the provision of equipment, maintenance and hosting, will enable car pa
  • November 23, 2018
    Venkat Sumantran: ‘Smart cities are more hype than reality’
    For all the talk of smart cities, investment in systems lags significantly behind organic expansion in most places. Andrew Stone talks to Venkat Sumantran, who has been looking at how to create a coherent framework which could help authorities answer multiple mobility questions Two megatrends are posing unprecedented challenges to those trying to keep people moving around the world’s urban areas now - and in the years and decades to come. The first is rapid urbanisation. One in six of us lived in urban a
  • May 18, 2018
    New ANPR solutions overcome variables
    The sheer range of variables makes it difficult to find a single algorithm to ensure a 100% standard of ANPR. David Crawford investigates new processing technology. Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR), using optical character recognition and image-processing to identify vehicles, plays key roles in traffic monitoring and law enforcement, access and parking control, electronic toll collection, vehicle security and crime deterrence. Overall, system performance is well rated, with high levels of