Yeadon minicab driver's appeal for bus lane access

Mohammed Sajaad says the current regulations are unfair as hackney carriages are allowed to drive in the city’s bus lanes.

He is planning to take his petition to Civic Hall next week in a bid to get the rules changed.

In April last year a decision was taken to to allow the 537 hackney carriage taxis licensed by the council to use bus lanes. But the right was not extended to the city’s 3869 private hire vehicles.

Now Mr Sajaad is campaigning for equal treatment for all cab drivers.

He said: “The reason we are doing this is because private hire vehicles are essentially doing the same job as hackney carriages. We are only asking for equality and to be treated the same as everyone else.

“I have 939 signatures from various private hire drivers and various firms and I am in the process of getting as many signatures as I can from the public.”

Mr Sajaad, who work for Yeadon-based SJK, will be joined by other drivers when he takes his petition to the council on Tuesday.

He said members of the public were generally unaware that some private hire vehicles were not allowed to use bus lanes, and said he stressed that a saving of a few minutes could make a vital difference.

He said: “I picked up a girl in Yeadon who needed to go to St James’. She wasn’t dying but her grandmother was. That ten minutes can make a difference - I don’t know whether she got there in time.”

A spokesman for the City Council said: “The Leeds bus network carries nearly 80 million passengers annually and bus priority measures provide valuable time savings and service reliability across the city. The possibility of allowing private hire vehicles to use bus lanes has been previously investigated by the council. It was considered however, that to take such a decision with over 4,000 private hire vehicles registered in Leeds would have a significant detrimental impact on bus reliability and make the bus lanes more intimidating for cyclists.”