Canada Post shamed into obeying bike-lane laws

Canada Post drivers will be expected to obey the law and not park their trucks in bike lanes, the corporation announced this week. The policy will apply only in Toronto.

In other places, apparently, lawbreaking drivers can be confident Canada Post has their backs. It’s a really weird thing, like declaring that stopping at red lights will be mandatory in Edmonton or that drivers won’t plow through crosswalks in the southern half of New Brunswick.

Canada Post seems not have realized that when it publicly declared on Tuesday afternoon that it would respect the law in Toronto, people elsewhere might ask, “Hey, what about here?” I asked what the company’s policy is on bike lanes in other cities and a full day later, Canada Post couldn’t say.

In Toronto there’s been a real ruckus about what scofflaws Canada Post drivers are. It’s been led by Kyle Ashley, a traffic and parking officer who tweets his tickets. There’s lots of bad behaviour out there, he observed last week, but Canada Post drivers are the worst for leaving their trucks lying around wherever.

Mayor John Tory has made a priority of enforcing no-stopping rules in all kinds of lanes to keep traffic moving, so he took up Ashley’s crusade.

“Canada Post understands the concerns raised regarding safety and bike lanes in Toronto,” the corporation said after the city and media threw its behaviour in its face. “As a result, we are instructing our employees to not park in bike lanes in the City of Toronto. For pickups or deliveries, they are expected to find a safe location to park their vehicle. If a safe parking location is not available, our employees are expected to avoid the stop, continue on their route and return any undelivered items to the depot.”

This looks like a concession but it’s an escalation on a different front. If a bike lane makes delivering a package at all inconvenient, Canada Post gives its employees permission not to bother, potentially making whole urban blocks delivery-free zones. They’ll get residents and merchants to oppose bike lanes by holding their packages hostage. After all, there’s always a safe parking location, if only you’re willing to walk a block or two. People get to places even when there are bike lanes.

Ottawa’s and Toronto’s bike-lane bylaws are similar and obvious. Motorists can stop in the lanes in just a few special cases: If they’re police or firefighters or paramedics answering calls, if they’re public employees working in the street, if they’re drivers loading or dropping off a disabled passenger. Otherwise, the no-stopping signs that invariably accompany a bike lane on a busy street mean what they say. No stopping.

Maybe this is unfair to delivery people. Canada Post could make that case. But the law is the law and public servants ought to obey it.

Ottawa officers have given 182 tickets so far this year for stopping illegally in bike lanes, city bylaw chief Roger Chapman say.

The problem is that even with enforcement, it takes naming-and-shaming for the rules to work. Ashley’s tickets didn’t get Canada Post to care about Toronto’s laws. Public exposure did.

Painted lanes don’t keep bike lanes protected or cyclists safe. Paint is the illusion of safety, an illusion that too often puts cyclists in more danger. Words in a bylaw are worth even less.

You know what works? Concrete. Metal. Curbs and bike tracks don’t completely stop determined lawbreakers like these, but they go a long way. If motorists can’t respect laws and painted markings, bring on the Jersey barriers and bollards.