Back in March, non-profit think tank Centre for London, along with taxi app FreeNow, published a bleak report on the future of London's black cabs, suggesting the profession could be extinct within two decades.
Now, TfL reveals it's feeling more optimistic — at least if applications to begin learning the Knowledge are anything to go by.
As the Knowledge of London — the notoriously burdensome test for cab drivers to memorise some 25,000 streets across Greater London — marks its 160th birthday (it was indeed created in 1865), TfL reports that applications have risen 68.6%, from 440 in 2022 to 742 at the end of November 2025.
You may reason that Covid has something to do with this fillip in applications; indeed, in 2020 only 178 signed up for the Knowledge, and in 2021, it was just 174.
However, the number just reported is on track to be the highest in a decade: in 2025, 1,315 people applied to take the Knowledge; in 2016 applications were at just 444, marking a downward spiral that the industry only now seems to be pulling out of.
So is the black cab industry flying in the face of Centre for London's gloomy predictions? Well, there may be another factor behind the surge in applications this year; the Department for Transport's Plug-in Taxi Grant will disappear as of 2026. Could it be that prospective cabbies — who have already lost benefits such as TfL's scrappage scheme, which ended in 2022 — are getting their applications in now to save a significant wodge of cash? Stats dished out this time next year will give us the answer to that one. And of course, these latest stats tell us who's started the Knowledge, not who's completed it. Centre for London's report noted a startling 66% drop-out rate among trainee cabbies.
In the same 160th anniversary press release, TfL happily reports that the average time required to complete the Knowledge is down from 5.25 years in 2020 to three years in 2025 ; earlier this year it was also announced that the test would be made easier to complete in the coming years. However, Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association (LTDA) said of the plan: "It's filled with platitudes about the importance of licensed taxis and recognises the serious challenges we face, yet it sets out no real plans to actually address those challenges."
In a London where self-driving Ubers are about to hit the streets, the Knowledge is anything but safe.
