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By DAN CARRIER
 

Cabbie Alan Fleming: ‘We’re getting hit all the time for no reason’
Cabbies' protest aims to cause traffic chaos

Drivers will circle Town Hall in parking tickets demo

TAXI drivers are planning to lay siege to the Town Hall and create gridlock on roads around King’s Cross in a protest over parking fines.
Members of the 1,000-strong London Cab Drivers Club – which represents black taxis – say Camden is the worst borough in London for unnecessary parking tickets.
Chairman Alan Fleming hopes the 300 cabs which will circle the Town Hall at lunchtime on Wednesday, April 13, will bring Euston Road to a standstill.
He said: “They seem to be going for cabbies. We get fines we shouldn’t have and it wears you down.”
Mr Fleming, 67, who lives in Fortune Green, added: “We are going to form a wagon train and we’ll circle the Town Hall to show them they have to take our views seriously.”
A cabbie for 35 years, he believes roadside cameras - there are 105 in the borough – result in unfair fines for taxi drivers. He said that taxis were allowed to stop to pick up and drop off on red routes, but drivers still got fines for doing so.
He added: “My colleagues are constantly getting whacked with fines for £100 – and it is so much bother to overturn them that many just end up shrugging their shoulders and paying up.”
Mr Fleming added that cameras allowed no leeway for cabbies, whose long shifts meant they were monitored constantly and minor mistakes spotted.
He said: “If you put so much as half a wheel over a yellow junction box, you get hit with a ticket.”
Cab drivers say the worst spots for tickets are the stretch of Euston Road outside King’s Cross railway station, a junction box at the corner of High Holborn and Kingsway, and the nearby junction of Southampton Road and Theobalds Road. And their protest has been backed by the London Motorists Action Group, which was set up by Hampstead actor Tom Conti and Kentish Town businessman Nick Marvides, who runs Ace Sports.
Mr Marvides said: “I think his plans are spot on. This just shows all sorts of people are being hit by these ridiculous traffic fines.”
A council press official said: “As we are a busy central London borough with a large number of cabs using our roads each day, there will naturally be more tickets issued to black cabs than in some other boroughs.
“Taxis are subject to exactly the same parking and traffic rules and regulations as any other vehicles are.”
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