In defence of Rickshaws

London rickshaws, or pedicabs, are always described as a scourge. They’re too bright and they’re too loud, the charge sheet reads: they block up the road and rip people off. Last week, the government announced in the King’s Speech that Transport for London will be given powers to license them. Drivers will have their fares regulated, their backgrounds checked and their driving abilities probed. At the moment, it’s a Wild West. If you buy a pedicab – congratulations, you’re a pedicab driver. You can now take German families over Westminster Bridge and play ‘Despacito’ as loud as a jet engine.

I went out over the weekend to speak to some of London’s pedicab drivers about their trade, and whether they were worried it’s going to die.

Most of the drivers insisted that pedicabs are good fun and that their charges are fair. But there are reports suggesting that some drivers have charged up to £500 for a ten-minute trip. A lot of the drivers I spoke to seemed to be aware of that image problem, and had fixed rates on the side of their cabs: £20 to Westminster Abbey, £25 to Big Ben, £45 to go down Oxford Street (per person!). ‘People should negotiate a price before they get in the back,’ one driver told me, more than hinting that it’s the fault of the customer if they get fleeced. Several of the drivers had other jobs: one worked at Tesco during the week, while another did waitering shifts at a restaurant.

One driver told me that pedicab-driving was a ‘bad job’. ‘It’s raining,’ he said, as he waited outside a theatre for a performance of Matilda to end. ‘I don’t want to be doing this.’ About 20 hungry rickshaws were swarming around nearby, one cab’s ‘Jingle Bells’ melting into another’s Whitney Houston.