Former parking enforcement officer who became Twitter famous to run for council on a platform of road safety

Thestar.com
July 19, 2018
Ben Spurr

Toronto’s most famous parking enforcement officer is planning to trade in his bike saddle for a seat on city council.

Kyle Ashley, the former cop who won online popularity last year by using social media to document himself ticketing drivers blocking cycling lanes, says he intends to take on Jaye Robinson in the new Ward 27 in the upcoming municipal election.

Kyle Ashley, who became Toronto's most famous parking enforcement officer zapping motorists in bike lanes, will run for city council against incumbent Jaye Robinson.

As public works chair this term, Robinson was in charge of the city’s first comprehensive road safety plan, which has been dubbed Vision Zero. But Ashley charged that on her watch Toronto hasn’t done enough to protect vulnerable road users.

“I feel a deep sense of personal responsibility as a champion for road safety,” Ashley said in an interview Thursday of his motivation to run.

He said traffic safety issues would be the “bread and butter” of his campaign, but he would also raise issues like affordable housing and “social programs to combat racialized violence.”

Ashley, 30, has never run for public office. He said he intended to register for the Oct. 22 vote at city hall Friday morning. As of Thursday afternoon, Robinson was running unopposed.

A two-term incumbent, Robinson launched Vision Zero with Mayor John Tory in 2016. It’s a five-year plan now budgeted at $109 million. At a meeting of his executive committee Tuesday Tory praised her “political leadership” on the file.

According to the mayor’s office, measures the city took last year as part of the plan included launching school safety zones and senior safety zones, installing 74 new red light cameras and nearly 100 signalized intersections with longer pedestrian crossing times, and physically modifying 28 intersections to make them safer.

“I think we are actually making progress,” Tory said.

Vision Zero is still a long way from achieving its goal of eliminating traffic deaths, however. So far this year at least 20 pedestrians and four cyclists have been killed, according to statistics compiled by the Star.

Robinson said earlier this month the city is rolling out the program as quickly as possible, but there is no quick fix to traffic deaths. She said under her leadership council’s commitment to the plan “has never faltered.”

Last summer Ashley’s outspoken online advocacy, uncommon for a rank-and-file public servant, led cycling advocates to brand him a hero, and earned praise from Tory and other city leaders. But it also appeared to upset his superiors and he went on sick leave after managers accused him last November of posting “inappropriate” tweets. He has since resigned.

A likely vulnerability to his election campaign is the fact Ashley lives in Etobicoke, kilometres away from the new Ward 27, which is in the York Mills and Bayview area of North York.

But Ashley said he doesn’t see that as an obstacle.

“We all care about the same things; safe streets, affordable housing, affordable child care and equitable opportunity for all,” he said.

Council incumbents are notoriously difficult to dislodge and, in 2014, Robinson decisively beat four challengers by capturing 83 per cent of the vote.

But Ashley insists he’s entering the race to win it, not just raise issues about cyclist and pedestrian safety.

“But if I don’t win I can rest my head at the end of each night, knowing that I elevated the level of public discourse by simply staying true to my brand as a disrupter, sort of an agitator, so to speak,” he said.