London's West End plagued by pedicabs, high prices, loud music

The London Met are clamping after residents in London’s West End claim of being plagued by “pedicabs”, with complaints of loud music and high charges of up to £100 for a seven-minute trip prompting action. Rickshaws or pedicabs are the only vehicles in Central London that are treated in the same way as a horse and carriage under the law, with no restrictions or licensing in place.
The Westminster City Council is working with the Met Police to take disreputable riders off the streets, the news coming in a council meeting when those attending were told 25 drivers were being taken to court for playing music too loudly across Soho, Covent Garden and China Town.
Councillor Heather Acton, in charge of communities, told Westminster City Council on January 20 saying: “We have been working with the police and we have been promised further operations. The feedback from operations has been good.”
She continued: “Twenty-five riders playing amplified music at a level likely to be annoyance are going to have case papers submitted for prosecution under the control and pollution act.
“I have heard a pedicab driver asking for over £100 to take someone from Selfridges to Edgware Road.
“This is the sort of practise we have to stop.”
The council is now looking to bring in community prevention notices to try and ban pedicabs from certain parts of the city. Nickie Aiken, MP for the City of London has asked Parliament twice to change the rules on pedicabs but so far there has been no action.
She said that she heard a group of tourists were charged £380 to travel between Leicester Square and Streatham Street. If they had taken an Uber it could have cost around £7.
Bizarrely the laws governing pedicabs have not been updated since 1869 and the rickshaws are treated legally as stage carriages. Anyone can drive a pedicab in central London and charge visitors for journeys without a permit or licence.
No safety check are required for pedicabs either, basically they do not have to abide by the same stringent rules as licensed cab drivers.
Sadly this is a case of the horse has already bolted, the very outdated laws needing to have been dealt with long before pedicabs in London’s West End got to the stage where they are said to have plagued residents and tourists.
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