You have now been on Toronto City Council and the Co-Chair of the Toronto Cycling Committee for three years now.
Since the inception of bicycle lanes in Toronto the problem of vehicles parking in them has been a problem. The City and the police have clearly stated that parking in a bike lane endangers the lives of cyclists, language which is consistent with the Criminal Code offence of Common Nuisance. There are other provisions of the Criminal Code that could apply for someone operating a vehicle in the bicycle lane.
The City has at its disposal an arsenal remedies it can apply to greatly discourage people from parking vehicles in the bicycle lane thereby reducing or eliminating the need to resort to criminal charges. There are only two reasons allowing a driver to park in a bike lane, those are in an emergency and at the direction of a police officer.
Everyday day there are hundreds of drivers, including drivers in the employ of the City, who blatantly endanger the lives of cyclists and nothing is done.
Why is it then that you and the City have taken no meaningful action to discourage people parking in the bicycle lanes? Why have you not shown any leadership in respect to this issue?
Every tool is available to you to fix a problem that the City itself considers a danger to human life. After three years in office is it wrong to consider you incapable of carrying out a simple step to protect lives? How can you be trusted with more complex issues if you cannot fix a simple problem? The tools are all there to fix the problem of parking in the bicycle lane, all you needed to do is show some leadership.
If your response is to blame someone else why have you not led the way to have those people removed and replaced with people that can do the job?
Sincerely,
Darren Stehr
7 comments:
Why not have the cops on bikes issue the tiks?? Hope you sent this to his office.
The cops say it is an issue for parking enforcement to deal with since it is essentially a parking offence. Even though it is illegal to drive in a bike lane.
Parking enforcement have repeatedly said they receive no direction or are told not to ticket in the bike lane in respect of political concerns. Councillors get a lot of complaints from people if parking enforcement tickets in the bike lane.
They do try other excuses. One being that the drivers are too violent when it comes to ticketing the ones parked in bike lanes. It would seem that these are the people that need to be adressed by the police and not cyclists.
I got the Adam GIambrone brochure in the mail today. I'll send you a copy.
speaking of cops < I was on Queen street at leslie tonight about to head down to the lake and use the bike path when a cab driver drove through the red light making a left hand turn, another car stoped for the red and so did the cop car car when the light went green the cop raced down leslie street and tore into the timhorton/wendies parking lot,, I though WOW right on the cops are on the job YAY but when I got there the cop was at the drive through :-| metro's finest eh
Last Friday on College, a city truck stopped next to the bikelane; did someone send them a memo?
In truth, though, I'm so used to going around vehicles stopped or parked in the bike lane, that this actually confused me for a moment - until I realized he was doing the right thing.
"In truth, though, I'm so used to going around vehicles stopped or parked in the bike lane, that this actually confused me for a moment - until I realized he was doing the right thing."
...until the passenger door smacks you in the face. ;)
It seems ridiculous to me that the city is ignoring this source of potential revenue. And complaints about tickets in the bike lane - how is this different than getting a ticket in any other signed No Stopping zone? It wasn't like it was not obvious you could not park there - bike laned streets have no stopping signs beside them.
Is the problem though that many drivers in the bike lane are still in their cars? Obviously it may be a safety issue choosing to ticket people who are still in their cars vs people not in their cars.
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