Space invaders

Police to crack down on bike-lane encroachers,

Every weekday Colin Powell cycles the separated lanes on Adelaide and Richmond Sts. Every day he is forced into car and truck traffic by at least one vehicular bike-lane invader.

“I have never ever seen a cop writing a ticket. Are they patrolling?” asks Powell, wondering if better separation of the lanes — more flexible posts and planters — would be a more effective deterrent.

The small but growing downtown network of separated “cycle tracks” are hailed by politicians, beloved by the booming ranks of cyclists who use them, and treated as a convenient pullover shoulder by some motorists.

Powell, a U of T PhD student, has braked to chastise some drivers. Responses, he says, range from “Sorry” to “F--- off” to “Get a job!”

The Star rode the length of the Richmond, Adelaide and Simcoe Sts. lanes, asking parked drivers why they do it. We got similar responses, along with arguments that it’s OK for a brief time, and we just all need to get along.

“I have never ever seen a cop writing a ticket. Are they patrolling?” COLIN POWELL CYCLIST

Powell is far from alone in saying he never sees lane invaders ticketed but Brian Moniz, a parking enforcement supervisor, says his staff have issued more than 6,500 $150 tickets this year.

Officers ticketing cars blocking other cars as part of Mayor John Tory’s traffic blitzes are expected to get lane blockers as well. Each day one officer roams downtown looking specifically for the invaders, he says.

Officers operate under a “target” system, expected to write a certain number of tickets per shift. That makes a row of illegally parked cars that are not jeopardizing anybody’s safety more enticing than a lone lane invader forcing multiple cyclists into traffic.

Moniz insists that is not a problem, saying officers are expected to target a “fair composition” of parking offences.

The problem, he says, is that drivers take off while the officer is writing the $150 ticket, or leave between the time a cyclist reports them and the officer arrives. Taxi drivers, he says, are especially skilled at the cat-andmouse game.

Moniz believes officers being able to issue a ticket without “affixing” it to the car — by recording the licence plate and other details for a ticket mailed to the car owner — will be what makes everyone safer. The city expects to start using the provincially granted power next year.

“That’s the best thing that we could achieve in order to change behaviour for the enforcement of this offence,” he says.

“If they knew that even parking there momentarily meant they could get a ticket in the mail, eliminating that cat-and-mouse game, I think it would change public behaviour with these bike lanes and peo- ple would get the message.”

Powell isn’t so sure. Couriers and mobile document shredders will still block lanes as long as they are physically able, he says, with any increase in tickets chalked up as a cost of business.

But it isn’t only cars and trucks forcing cyclists into traffic.

The Star encountered multiple sections of lanes, particularly on Adelaide, where condo construction has invaded bike lanes.