The chairman of Our Union Street has warned Aberdeen is heading into Scotland's largest free event - the Tall Ships - with the fewest number of taxis in years.
Bob Keiller, who is head of the community organisation pushing the regeneration and revival of Union Street, urged the council to change the "increasingly dubious" knowledge test to attract more drivers.
It comes as Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce last month revealed Aberdeen City Council did not know how many taxis and private hire cars would be able to come into the city centre once their LEZ exemption expired on June 1.
Critics branded the situation "economic self-harm", and the local authority confirmed it was in talks to extend the exemption to allow more access to the city centre while Aberdeen hosts the Tall Ships in July and Offshore Europe in September.
Now, writing in The Press & Journal, Bob Keiller criticised the findings of a council report which concluded there was "no evidence of significant unmet demand" for taxis in the city.
He wrote: "My fear is that this report could be used to justify the continuation of the increasingly dubious street knowledge test.
"Scottish Government guidelines state that any topographical knowledge test should reflect the complexity of the local geography, on the principle of ensuring that barriers to entry are not unnecessarily high.
"On this basis, you might expect that any test for Aberdeen will be simpler and easier than those tests for our larger and more geographically complex cousins, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
"But while Aberdeen requires private hire drivers to complete a comprehensive street knowledge test – neither Edinburgh nor Glasgow has this. The barrier to entry is definitely, unnecessarily high."
Bob concluded: "We will be heading into the Tall Ships and Offshore Europe with fewer taxis than we have had for many years."
Read the full article on the P&J website.