Toronto ‘protected’ bike lanes routinely invaded, but proposed ticket-by-mail system might help

Drivers who stop in bike lanes risk a $150 fine, but many vehicles and even construction material blocked lanes Monday.

Thestar.com
Dec. 7, 2015
By David Rider

A line of 15 Beck taxis idling inside the celebrated Richmond St. protected bike lane on Friday night was shocking - even to a Beck boss - but cyclists are forced into downtown traffic by obstacles like that all the time.

It’s the kind of frustration cycling activist Jared Kolb hopes will be rarer if the city starts sending offending drivers tickets in the mail. Potentially, a new power granted by the province to mail them rather than have to affix them to the car would speed things up and get more tickets written.

“We're building infrastructure, but we direly need the enforcement to go along with it,” Kolb told the Star.

A city staff report on how to implement the system, where a photo or written description of details including the licence plate would trigger a fine through a non-court system, is expected to go to city council next spring.

At lunchtime Monday, a Star reporter checking out the protected lanes on Richmond and Adelaide St. saw condo construction materials, cars and many trucks blocking multiple sections. No parking enforcement officers were seen.

Nor were any officers visible to Ev Delen, a cyclist and city-hall watcher, on Friday around 11 p.m., when he saw the parade of taxis transform the Richmond lane at Bay St. into a makeshift taxi stand.

About a dozen bikes were forced into traffic alongside streetcar tracks, Delen said, while cabs idled behind the flexible posts installed to give cyclists a safe commuting space. He tweeted photos and numbers of the offending cabs and called 311 to complain.

Kristine Hubbard, Beck’s operations manager, called the bike lane invasion “shocking.”

“The words escape me = when I saw it, I couldn't believe it,” Hubbard said of viewing the photos on Twitter on Saturday morning, adding she values bike lanes. “This can never happen again.”

Hubbard is still investigating, but said cabbies were waiting to pick up people from an Arcadian Court event. Some said they just followed the taxi ahead.

“At no time do I think they thought it was OK to be there, but they ignored that because they saw a car in front of them,” she said, adding she is telling drivers and plate owners that is no excuse for “dangerous, illegal activity.”

Opened as a pilot project in 2014 and extended after the city reported a boom in cyclist use and reduction in car commute times, the small network of separated lanes in Toronto’s core has been heralded by city hall and cycling advocates as a commuting success that helps cut gridlock and greenhouse gas emissions.

Cabs are legally allowed to enter a regular marked bike lane only to pick up or drop off passengers. Only cabs on contract for TTC’s Wheel Trans are allowed to enter a protected “cycle track” for that purpose.

Mayor John Tory has initiated crackdowns on drivers blocking other drivers on main streets. He has had little to say about motorists using bike lanes as a shoulder and forcing cyclists into traffic.

On Monday, after trumpeting his trip to a Paris climate-change conference and vowing to be an environmental leader, the mayor said he had heard about the taxi trouble and vowed to take up bike-lane blockages with Toronto police, which operate parking enforcement.

Parking enforcement could not be reached for comment Monday.

Kolb, executive director of the advocacy group Cycle Toronto, called for a Tory-initiated blitz on lane blockers.

Despite an “explosion” of two-wheeled commuters, he said, many motorists still think it’s socially acceptable to pull into a lane to drop somebody off or run in for a coffee.

Kolb is hopeful changes to how ticketing is done could help parking enforcement issue more $150 fines and infuse the bylaw infraction with the same stigma as texting and driving.