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PROTEST: Hackney carriage drivers in Preston are angry that Virgin Trains plans to impose a 12-cab rule at the city's railway station

Furious cabbies in Preston are planning a third protest in the city and could withdraw their services completely from Preston Railway Station following a row over parking allocation.

It comes after two days of 'go-slow' protests by Hackney carriage driivers in the city this week which caused major disruption to communters and traffic across the city.

On Tuesday about 90 cabbies brought the city centre to a standstill after staging a go-slow in protest following Virgin Trains' announcement that just 12 taxis would be allowed to use the taxi rank at any one time.

Currently several cabs queue single file at the taxi rank, off Fishergate, picking up fares in turn.

Yesterday, the cabbies staged a second slow drive-through the city escorted by police officers.

The drivers are now planning a similar protest on Monday which is likely to cause more chaos across the city.

Angry taxi driver, Parvesh Vatcha, said the move by Virgin Trains to limit taxi numbers would affect the livelihood of hundreds of cabbies and would cause chaos for Preston traffic.

The 41-year-old father of three, who lives with his wife Minal in Broadgate, said: "Even though we've paid for a permit to collect passengers from the railway station, we've got nowhere to park.

"We won't be able to provide a service to the people who come off the trains as there just won't be enough of us at the station and we'll be clogging up the rest of the city looking for parking."

Charlie Oakes, chairman of the Bolton, Bury and Preston Hackney Carriage Association, said that more protests were planned and if the issue was not resolved then taxi services could be completely withdrawn from the city.

He added: "Taking industrial action is never a good thing as the people that suffer the most are the drivers and the passengers.

"But what Virgin Trains have done is absolutely ludicrous and they have not left us with any other option at the moment."

Virgin Trains', which owns the rank, wants to limit the number of waiting taxis to 12 in order to allow for a passenger drop-off zone to be created.

The current drop-off area will be replaced with the building of a new multi-storey car park.

The company said that the rank is only for 12 taxis and now plans to enforce the rule.

But the company has sold 108 annual permits to taxi drivers to collect fares from the railway station at a cost of nearly £300 each.

A spokesman for Virgin Trains said: "We have to manage traffic arrangements at the station properly and we are trying to be fair to everybody.

"Work on a new mulit-storey car park has meant that we have had to restrict the number of taxi's allowed on the rank to 12 and this has always been the case but it has not been enforced.

"We will be continuing our discussions with Mr Oakes and we hope to keep disruption to passengers to a minimum."

7:20pm Thursday 8th May 2008

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