London taxi drivers lose high court challenge to cycle superhighway

Cabbies have lost a high court challenge that could have disrupted completion of London’s £47m flagship east-west cycle superhighway.

The Licensed Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA) asked a judge to declare that the continued construction of the segregated cycling route linking Westbourne Grove and Tower Hill via the Victoria Embankment without planning permission “constitutes a breach of planning control”.But Mrs Justice Patterson rejected the application. Steve McNamara, LTDA’s general secretary, accused the London mayor, Boris Johnson, of rushing through the scheme as an ill-judged “last hurrah” before he leaves office.

The cabbies say the scheme is causing major delays in central London because of the amount of road space it is taking up. The LTDA asked the judge at a recent hearing in London to grant a judicial review against Transport for London (TfL) and the mayor to force a reconsideration of the whole project.

TfL is the highway authority for Greater London Authority (GLA) roads. Its legal team argued that it would be inappropriate for the court to make a declaration as it would usurp the powers of local planning authorities.

Mark Lowe QC, for the LTDA, said the association had consistently opposed the cycle superhighway on behalf of its 10,000-plus members.

Lowe told the judge that the project had gone ahead without planning permission or an environmental impact assessment (EIA) as required by the EU EIA drective. Construction work started around April last year, but he said there was no evidence that the question of whether an EIA or planning permission were needed had properly been considered. When TfL was asked why permission had not been sought, it described the superhighway as “works of improvement” not requiring permission or an EIA, said Lowe.

He asked the judge to rule that construction of the superhighway was a “development” as defined under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and not exempt from the need for permission, especially as it was likely to give rise to “significant adverse environmental effects”. Dismissing the LTDA case, the judge ruled the TfL did not err in law, “and was not irrational in reaching its conclusion that there was no significant adverse environmental effect from the proposals as a whole”.

The judge also declared: “On the evidence before the court, planning permission is not required for phase one of the superhighway as a whole. “That is not to say that it may not be required for certain minor works within the scheme (that information is not before the court), or that it may not be required for other cycle superhighways or for parts of them in the future. Each scheme will need to be judged on its own facts.” When the legal challenge was first announced, many cyclists threatened to withdraw their custom from black cabs, and some said they would use rival Uber instead. Howard Carter, general counsel at TfL, said: “The east-west cycle superhighway will make London’s roads safer for all, particularly cyclists.”