Crossing Market Street on a late afternoon last week was interesting. There was hardly any traffic, except for the occasional bus and taxi.

That part of the city centre, going towards Ivegate, resembled Pyongyang, the largely traffic-free capital of North Korea. Clearly, the new bus lane spy cameras, which had caught out nearly 17,000 drivers in three weeks, were doing their job.

Perhaps too well. For there was a noticeable paucity of people stopping off or dropping off to shop.

Then again, there are fewer shops in Market Street. The top end of what used to be Bradford’s main shopping thoroughfare, from the boarded-up Lord Clarke to the Darley Street junction, is a row of desolation.

Val Summerscales, secretary of Bradford Chamber of Trade, which represents small businesses, remembers the time when Bradford Council wanted to close Petergate to traffic but was persuaded by the Chamber to think again.

She is concerned that by restricting Market Street traffic to buses, taxis and cyclists – seemingly the Council’s holy trinity of acceptable road-users – business will decline even more. One wonders what would happen if an ambulance or fire appliance were called to Market Street.

She said: “How are people supposed to make deliveries or collections?”

That’s a question that fresh food delivery driver Richard Garthwaite would like answering. He was fined 15 times in three weeks for trying to do his job. The fines total £900 – about two-thirds of his monthly income.

Pensioner Barbara Rudd, who used to work in two fashion shops in Darley Street, feels she can no longer take the car into the city centre, where the restrictions are many and the parking wardens “pounce”.

“I remember the business that was in Darley Street and the surrounding area when I used to work there. It was fantastic,” she said.

While there will be few objections to ridding the city centre of promenading joy-riders – windows down, rap music blaring – the logic of the decision to permit taxis to use Market Street but not private-hire vehicles would fox even a compiler of Sudoku puzzles. Labour councillor Sajawal Hussain thinks the discrimination between the white and green hackney carriage trade and private hire is unfair and too sudden.

“Private-hire drivers should be given the benefit of the doubt and a period of grace because they are doing a public service job, the same as buses,” he said.

The official response to that from City Hall is that the 2,000 private-hire cars are not for ‘public’ hire, unlike the 225 taxis: the latter need to move between central locations.

Councillor Hussain, who represents City ward, said that the fees and penalties for private-hire vehicles and taxis were the same; both transported the elderly and the disabled; both took people to and from work – so why the discrimination?

“I have no personal interest in the private-hire business myself. But in my ward there are a lot of private-hire drivers who are affected. That’s why I am campaigning for the removal of these restrictions.

“What’s the reason for having 24/7 restrictions in Market Street? Do we have buses after 11.30pm? I think this is a bizarre idea. Takeaway delivery drivers cannot use Market Street as a route at all.

“We should not be driving business out of the city centre. This is not a good idea,” he added.

Wharfedale Conservative councillor Chris Greaves, chairman of Metro, the West Yorkshire Integrated Transport Authority, supports Bradford Council’s traffic-easing measures and bus lanes. However, he said he would not lose any sleep if bus lane restrictions were limited to certain hours, as they are along Manningham Lane and in Leeds.

“I can see there’s an argument for stopping the restrictions when buses stop running. It’s silly having a bus lane if there isn’t a bus. This is something the Council could look at again,” he added.

“In Leeds, taxis can use bus lanes at certain times, basically to clear the clubbers. As for the effect on the disabled and elderly, it’s got to be re-examined to some degree. That has got to be a Council decision.”

He does not agree with Coun Hussain, however, that there is no essential difference between a taxi and a private-hire vehicle.

The former can be stopped in the street, the other has to be summoned, he said.

While that is true, what is the difference in the functions they perform?