The 1989 TRRL London taxi survey

A major survey of London's taxi industry was undertaken with the cooperation of 231 licensed drivers, who were asked to complete detailed records of one week's work, and to hand out self-completion questionnaires to their passengers. The resulting database of 21,769 taxi trips and 6,993 passenger responses was analysed to provide up-to-date statistics on the patterns of taxi operation and use. Comparison of these with surveys undertaken in the late sixties/early seventies suggests little has changed over the last two decades. This is a somewhat unexpected result in view of the intervening economic and legislative changes, and leads to the belief that taxi supply has been to an extent self-regulatory.