Hackney carriages and private hire vehicles are banned from using most of the city's bus lanes and must use the same route as normal traffic.

Their colleagues in Derby, Leicester and Birmingham can already avoid the queues, making journeys a lot quicker and the fares cheaper.

Taxi drivers say this is unfair and say they should have the same rights as other forms of local transport.

Time wasted

Farhat Zafir is a taxi driver in the city: "Sometimes we have a customer to drop in a bus lane, we can't even do that.

"The other day I was dropping an old lady off on Mansfield Road in Sherwood, but the traffic warden was telling me to move.

"He says you cannot park here, if you don't move I will give you a ticket."

"We are transport just like buses are.

"It can cost you �3-�5 extra on top of the consumer's fare, that's a lot of time wasted in traffic."

'High frequency'

In Derby almost all bus lanes can be used by Hackney Carriages, taxi's can use bus lanes in Leicester and in Birmingham, black cabs (not private hire vehicles) can also use the lanes.

Dave Tool is responsible for transport with Nottingham City Council, he disagrees with the cabbie's stance: "A bus lane is what it says it is, it's a facility for buses and buses move far more people than taxi's do."

"Nottingham's bus lanes are very well used we have very high frequency bus services.