When Joe Pantalone’s campaign was busted by one of George Smitherman’s volunteers for having his car parked in a bike lane in July, his spokesman criticized Smitherman and his team for publicizing an incident which he called a “Mickey Mouse” issue. ‘
The spokesman said that the car was only parked there for “13 seconds” to pick up the candidate.
But when a Ryerson student snapped a shot of Smitherman’s large campaign truck committing the same offence over the weekend, Pantalone didn’t treat it like a Disney film either.
He posted the image and links to stories about the sighting on both his campaign website and Facebook page. The student, Edmund Carlson, said that he saw the truck parked there for over half an hour.
Considering that both candidates advocate improving current bike lane conditions and adding more of them to the cities streets over the next few years, it’s ironic that either of their vehicles be caught in this situation during their campaign.
Let’s put ethics and bickering aside for a minute, though, to look at who, if anyone, was actually doing something wrong.
Actually, a minute might be too long. They both were in the wrong.
Obviously enough, bicycle lanes are intended for bicycles and bicycles only. Parking or stopping in them is illegal and, although fines change depending on location and other specifics, Toronto parking enforcement says that someone who does so is looking at a ticket of about $60.
Emergency vehicles are, of course, exempt from this law along with school buses, taxis, or cars driving a person with a disability who are in the act picking up or dropping someone off.
As for cars belonging to mayoral candidates – no exception for those.
So, before can Smitherman can improve safety for bike riders in the city and before Pantalone can execute the Complete Streets plan that he’s encouraging, they might want to make sure that they know exactly how to use the bike lanes that they hope to fix.
