Smoother traffic is only the beginning: John Tory’s parking crackdown will change the way Toronto works
Attention Toronto drivers: your heaping helping of schadenfreude is ready. For all the times you’ve ever been stuck behind an illegally parked vehicle, asking aloud why doesn’t someone fine that jerk and tow him away?, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for: the moment when misfortune befalls them all, all at once, for the benefit of your drive home.
Mayor John Tory’s tag-and-tow offensive against illegally parked cars in the downtown core is now into its second week, ticketing and impounding any vehicle that parks illegally and blocks traffic during peak hours. The first week was a social media delight, as dozens of people, notably including Toronto Police Constable Clint Stibbe, snapped and posted photos of the towaways, many of them delivery trucks. Stibbe’s Twitter feed in particular—@TrafficServices—was a rousing perp parade of company logos winched to the boom, including FedEx, Coca-Cola, Canada Post, Canadian Linen and Uniform Service, and every shredding service under the sun: Iron Mountain, Recall Document Solutions, and AMJ Shredding. The traffic sting has ensnared a surprisingly broad variety of businesses, including Joe Warmington favourite Drain City, whose work consists of sucking up and hauling away used deep-fryer grease from downtown restaurants.
Some media outlets have been calling the mayor’s initiative a “blitz,” but Tory doesn’t want anyone to think this is a temporary measure that will disappear as quickly as it arrived. “The new normal” is how the mayor’s staff likes to describe the situation, and it’s about more than traffic. It’s a long overdue shift in the city’s metabolism, and so far Tory and his staff seem to be the only ones who’ve grasped just how far-reaching it will prove to be.
Two weeks in, new normalcy is finally sinking in for delivery businesses. “This is a huge issue for us,” says Darren Bull, the Director of Operations for AMJ Shredding. When the company had one of its trucks towed away last week, it was enough to make management reconsider the structure of the entire operation. The truck cost $900 to retrieve, but arguably the bigger loss came from the appointments missed and revenue forgone due to time spent in the pound. Bull is certainly not willing to risk repeated towings.
As a stopgap measure, AMJ Shredding has doubled the number of staff in each truck to two: one to go up and collect documents for shredding, the other to drive the truck around the block while waiting for his colleague to return. Meanwhile, Bull says, “We are rethinking everything, and we are calling all our customers. Scheduling is going to be very different in the near future. We are probably going to have to move to a night shift.”
His competitors are surely calling and visiting their customers too, and none of the conversations will be especially pleasant, because each one is going to be, in one way or another, about who will bear the burden of this problem. For many businesses, coping with the new normal could mean hiring more staff during off-peak hours to handle pickups and deliveries. Many of them don’t have any evening or night staff at all right now.
If those businesses want to stay downtown, they will have to adjust. As I parsed the logos of the offenders last week, one infuriating question rose to the surface: What are any of these trucks doing anywhere near downtown during rush hour? The services they offer are all forms of provisioning or disposal. It’s scut work, the back-room support that allows the more important, economic-engine-of-the-nation work to proceed efficiently. In many cases there’s no good reason any of it should be done during daylight hours, period.
Can hospitals and hotels not receive their fresh linens overnight? If your store sells Coke until 11 p.m., does your delivery really have to happen between 7 and 9 a.m.? Why is rush hour the only window of opportunity for carting away spent grease? As for the work that does need to happen during rush hour, why is it still being done in cars and trucks? Bike couriers can handle more of it than they currently do, and given the constant gridlock downtown, they can handle it faster than their four-wheeled competitors.
The only reason it has been viable for any of these businesses to operate during peak hours is because the city has, until now, turned a blind eye to them. The non-enforcement of parking restrictions has been so widespread and so dependable for so long, it has worked its way into the business-model foundations of pretty much every vehicle delivery service in the core. The whole thing was a false economy, built upon the certainty that the city would sell out all its surface commuters for the sake of somebody’s delivery.
Now that the city has done away with that infuriating arrangment (it’s hard to fathom how Torontonians put up with it for as long as they did), an expanded night shift is the logical solution. Urbanists and their sympathizers, including me, are obsessed with maximizing the city grid’s throughput by improving public transit, but we rarely consider the lengthy tracts of surplus road space that appear every day between the hours of 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. It only makes sense to shift as much travel as possible to those hours.
To judge from Manhattan’s experience, all involved would be happier as a result. New York’s off-hour delivery program had, as of 2013, enlisted more than 150 restaurants and retailers in a scheme to schedule deliveries between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. In many cases, businesses have controlled the cost of the shift by giving couriers keys, allowing them to drop off goods and lock up afterwards. Businesses have found that the shift has allowed staff to focus more on customers during regular business hours. Drivers find they make better time in every way: they can drive faster, park with ease, and deliver goods unimpeded. The average time spent at each location has declined from 100 minutes to 30 minutes. Toronto would surely see similar benefits from a more active overnight shift.
When and if the change happens, it will affect every downtown operation that accepts daytime deliveries, which is pretty much all of them. Give John Tory credit: he knew that enforcing traffic regulations would have seismic repercussions for an entire industry, and he did it anyway. All those awkward conversations now underway, about how businesses and institutions and provisioners and haulers will shift their operations to off-peak hours? In every one of those meetings, the mayor is being cursed for screwing with their convenient arrangements. Only cities of a certain size and influence—and of a certain congestion level—can flex muscle like this, and even then it takes a mayor willing to flex it.
![](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://torontolife.com/city/traffic-beginning-john-torys-parking-crackdown-will-change-way-toronto-works/&title=Smoother traffic is only the beginning: John Tory’s parking crackdown will change the way Toronto works&picture=https://torontolife.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/john-tory-tag-and-tow.jpg&description=[caption id="attachment_304452" align="alignnone" width="656"] (Images: left and upper right: Daniel Neuhaus; lower right: courtesy of TPS Traffic Services)[/caption]
Attention Toronto drivers: your heaping helping of schadenfreude is ready. For all the times you’ve ever been stuck behind an illegally parked vehicle, asking aloud why doesn’t someone fine that jerk and tow him away?, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for: the moment when misfortune befalls them all, all at once, for the benefit of your drive home.
Mayor John Tory’s tag-and-tow offensive against illegally parked cars in the downtown core is now into its second week, ticketing and impounding any vehicle that parks illegally and blocks traffic during peak hours. The first week was a social media delight, as dozens of people, notably including Toronto Police Constable Clint Stibbe, snapped and posted photos of the towaways, many of them delivery trucks. Stibbe’s Twitter feed in particular—@TrafficServices—was a rousing perp parade of company logos winched to the boom, including FedEx, Coca-Cola, Canada Post, Canadian Linen and Uniform Service, and every shredding service under the sun: Iron Mountain, Recall Document Solutions, and AMJ Shredding. The traffic sting has ensnared a surprisingly broad variety of businesses, including Joe Warmington favourite Drain City, whose work consists of sucking up and hauling away used deep-fryer grease from downtown restaurants.
Some media outlets have been calling the mayor’s initiative a “blitz,” but Tory doesn’t want anyone to think this is a temporary measure that will disappear as quickly as it arrived. “The new normal” is how the mayor’s staff likes to describe the situation, and it’s about more than traffic. It’s a long overdue shift in the city’s metabolism, and so far Tory and his staff seem to be the only ones who’ve grasped just how far-reaching it will prove to be.
Two weeks in, new normalcy is finally sinking in for delivery businesses. “This is a huge issue for us,” says Darren Bull, the Director of Operations for AMJ Shredding. When the company had one of its trucks towed away last week, it was enough to make management reconsider the structure of the entire operation. The truck cost $900 to retrieve, but arguably the bigger loss came from the appointments missed and revenue forgone due to time spent in the pound. Bull is certainly not willing to risk repeated towings.
As a stopgap measure, AMJ Shredding has doubled the number of staff in each truck to two: one to go up and collect documents for shredding, the other to drive the truck around the block while waiting for his colleague to return. Meanwhile, Bull says, “We are rethinking everything, and we are calling all our customers. Scheduling is going to be very different in the near future. We are probably going to have to move to a night shift.”
His competitors are surely calling and visiting their customers too, and none of the conversations will be especially pleasant, because each one is going to be, in one way or another, about who will bear the burden of this problem. For many businesses, coping with the new normal could mean hiring more staff during off-peak hours to handle pickups and deliveries. Many of them don’t have any evening or night staff at all right now.
If those businesses want to stay downtown, they will have to adjust. As I parsed the logos of the offenders last week, one infuriating question rose to the surface: What are any of these trucks doing anywhere near downtown during rush hour? The services they offer are all forms of provisioning or disposal. It’s scut work, the back-room support that allows the more important, economic-engine-of-the-nation work to proceed efficiently. In many cases there’s no good reason any of it should be done during daylight hours, period.
Can hospitals and hotels not receive their fresh linens overnight? If your store sells Coke until 11 p.m., does your delivery really have to happen between 7 and 9 a.m.? Why is rush hour the only window of opportunity for carting away spent grease? As for the work that does need to happen during rush hour, why is it still being done in cars and trucks? Bike couriers can handle more of it than they currently do, and given the constant gridlock downtown, they can handle it faster than their four-wheeled competitors.
The only reason it has been viable for any of these businesses to operate during peak hours is because the city has, until now, turned a blind eye to them. The non-enforcement of parking restrictions has been so widespread and so dependable for so long, it has worked its way into the business-model foundations of pretty much every vehicle delivery service in the core. The whole thing was a false economy, built upon the certainty that the city would sell out all its surface commuters for the sake of somebody’s delivery.
Now that the city has done away with that infuriating arrangment (it’s hard to fathom how Torontonians put up with it for as long as they did), an expanded night shift is the logical solution. Urbanists and their sympathizers, including me, are obsessed with maximizing the city grid’s throughput by improving public transit, but we rarely consider the lengthy tracts of surplus road space that appear every day between the hours of 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. It only makes sense to shift as much travel as possible to those hours.
To judge from Manhattan’s experience, all involved would be happier as a result. New York’s off-hour delivery program had, as of 2013, enlisted more than 150 restaurants and retailers in a scheme to schedule deliveries between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. In many cases, businesses have controlled the cost of the shift by giving couriers keys, allowing them to drop off goods and lock up afterwards. Businesses have found that the shift has allowed staff to focus more on customers during regular business hours. Drivers find they make better time in every way: they can drive faster, park with ease, and deliver goods unimpeded. The average time spent at each location has declined from 100 minutes to 30 minutes. Toronto would surely see similar benefits from a more active overnight shift.
When and if the change happens, it will affect every downtown operation that accepts daytime deliveries, which is pretty much all of them. Give John Tory credit: he knew that enforcing traffic regulations would have seismic repercussions for an entire industry, and he did it anyway. All those awkward conversations now underway, about how businesses and institutions and provisioners and haulers will shift their operations to off-peak hours? In every one of those meetings, the mayor is being cursed for screwing with their convenient arrangements. Only cities of a certain size and influence—and of a certain congestion level—can flex muscle like this, and even then it takes a mayor willing to flex it.
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Think a liberal would or could make decisions of this magnitude? LMAO!
Yeah lets make these delivery people and other businesses work the night shift so that Joe Stocker broker from Lawrence Park can get downtown in his single occupancy X5 faster!
Yes well that’s been the law for quite some time.. But they don’t need to deliver overnight.. they can deliver at 9:01am on most streets, or the night before. At King and Spadina, sidestreets have been designated as courier delivery areas – and i see the canada post and fedex trucks stopped there while the driver makes multiple deliveries, without having to run back and keep moving the truck. To me it seems that has made the drivers job easier.
But don’t for one moment suggest this is about class warfare.. that’s a silly argument. Joe Stockbroker has less gridlock to deal with, sure, but so do buses, bikes, pedestrians, single mothers, students and everyone else.
That was the most generalized statement I have ever read in my life.
Hurray for John Tory!!!
If you don’t ever depend on these delivery guys you are amazingly off the grid. If you know you do, this cost will be passed on to you very soon.
First, nobody will be going X5 faster. Second, why do you think only Joe Stocker is affected? A lot of people, many car pooling, are driving downtown in rush hour, most of whom cannot afford Lawrence Park. But the illegal parking affects more than just drivers. Christ, I walk down Adelaide every day, and watch delivery vehicles parked at Adelaide and Yonge all the time. When they do, cars end up backing into the intersection, interfering with pedestrians. Cyclists end up being pushed out of the curb lane. It’s awesome watching how many people are adversely impacted by one truck delivering paper cups to the Tim Hortons.
If you want to make this about class warfare then turn it around and how about all the rich people who park on Parkside during 4-6 when they are not allowed causing congestion?
how about the people on the downtown streetcars stuck in insane rush hour traffic because of blocked lanes forcing cars into the same lane as the streetcar tracks?
Perhap, non emergency road repairs / construction can follow the same regulation.
Very good point, Darren, and one Rye-Guy12 seems to be missing.
True enough. I think Rye-Guy just meant to snarkily imply that people driving alone in big cars (like a BMW X5) should not take priority over other workers. Clearly there’s much more motivation than that to reduce traffic congestion.
Thousands upon thousands are using every major downtown street at rush hour. Trying to pit a stockbroker alone in a BMW X5 against other workers is simply stupid, because a parked delivery truck adversely impacts hundreds of people. And suggesting that there is some ulterior motive is just inane.
Clearly you don’t live downtown; you should see what it’s done for the 504 King streetcar. Not once since the crackdown began have I been stuck on a streetcar at the King/Spadina westbound clusterfu–.
Looking out out the front window of the streetcars, it’s almost eerie to see all lanes clear of parked vehicles, damn near to the horizon. Feels like I’m living in the Twilight Zone, actually.
Used to depend on them all the time. But, never expected to receive a package before 10am, and never expected to have on go out after 4pm.
The NYC solution should be considered and possibly followed.
I agree, this is great. It made me think twice today about pulling over. Unfortunately he doesn’t have the balls to stand up to the unions on private garbage pick up in the east end.
Rob Ford is a Liberal?? Hmmmm
Love John Tory. He’s a LEADER!~! yeah Toronto!!!
Ford is an idiot, but he still made the sort of high impact policy decisions that would confuse a waffling, indecisive lib, that’s for sure.
or maybe it can be absorbed as cost of doing business huh? Manhattan seems t be able to cope very well. No fear mongering there either.
The Romans had this figured out by the middle of the first century BC. https://books.google.ca/books?id=ORahAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA253&lpg=PA253&dq=ancient+rome+delivery+hours&source=bl&ots=HxpLuFi1MG&sig=eLE86PNpJ9x2TPQM1Wn4yGmapIc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=66C1VIPoDM6ayASAj4HoBQ&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=ancient%20rome%20delivery%20hours&f=false
We’ll see.
The reason it works on KING, and mostly ONLY king, is because travelling east on it, for example, you can’t make a left at almost ANY street or intersection…as opposed to every other main road where you CAN make a left or right at every bloody road or intersection. Generally you have a 2 lane roads…the right lane is either under construction or-full of buses, school buses, garbage trucks, and cars either stopping or stopping to make right turns, and the left lane has people making lefts…THAT”S the problem!! NOT the 5 people a day who get away with not being ticketed and towed…they cracked down on THAT EONS ago….! As soon as Mayor Miller came in. I like our new Mayor, but this isn’t going to solve ANYTHING. It will however -surprise surprise, will mean more cash in the city’s pocket! Pretty soon we won’t be able to park in our OWN DRIVEWAYS…SO frustrated!!!!!
No one who lives on a subway line should be driving downtown anyway
Interested-can you elaborate? I do know they have a LOT of one way streets which I think is a great start, because in my opinion, it’s people being able to make lefts and rights from 2 lane roads at almost all and any intersection that is in fact the problem….
Yep, we’re aaaaaaaall lawyers and stockbrokers. Every last one of us. None of us are blue or white collar workers making much less than six figures. None of us are working jobs that require us to drive into town because of Toronto’s insufficient transit system. Oh, Jeeves! Warm up the Bentley. I feel like going to the caviar and brandy store!
/Have a car
//Still take the subway to work.
This looks like a promising, cheap & effective long term solution: https://towit.io
How do you know?
Because before the election he said the proof from the west was the only study he needed and that this would be a go for sure. Now, he says he needs to see a study before he decides. That is politics for I can’t say no so lets spend money and get someone to provide us with reason to say now. Guaranteed.
No, the problem isn’t just school buses and garbage trucks (what?) the problem is people parking illegally. Sounds like someone was towed!
While this sounds like a great idea in theory, I can say for certain that I am never a fan of construction happening when I’m trying to sleep. And even downtown, there are hotels and condos interspersed between all of the offices.
This would not be a good idea.
People other than stock brokers drive downtown. The surface traffic also messes up the busses and street cars, making it hard for “Joe the cook” to get to his restaurant job, or “Joe the Retail Sales associate” to get to his job.
Good try with the troll, though.
This is ridiculous
For anyone that doesn’t do service or courier work this is a dream. But when your deliveries and packages etc… The list goes on…. Don’t get done…. Guess you better email John Tory. Remember everything comes down there on a truck and this law favours only one kind of work.
John Tory you are a sad excuse for a mayor.
Again, great in theory. I live near Pape station. I find it a regular occurence to wait 4-6 subway trains before I can even get on the train. What should be a 30-40 minute trip is now at LEAST an hour, if not 1hr 15. That’s the kind of travel time I used to do from PICKERING.
Then I bought an eBike, and I get to work in under 20 minutes. I bet it will be faster now with less illegallg parked (or standing, or stopped) cars clogging up the lanes.
Yes-years ago, and so? That’s my point, in fact-they were ALREADY doing all this-they are just expanding it to beyond the core….it’s not the odd illegally parked car…it’s everything ELSE. This is just something making it SEEM like a lot is being done, when in fact…it’s all smoke and mirrors and more $ for City Hall, which is great if they used it to EXPAND roads
…but whatever, to each their own. I’m not sold-end of story.
Perhaps next time you think of shopping or going downtown, you will probably want to shop north of the 401 where we have plenty of free parking and small businesses who will earn your trust and say thanks for your hard earned dollars. Screw Toronto and it’s core. All the condos have taken any remaining parking lots. Builders get rich and we pay for it.
hmm. good point. :)
Could be even more of a win win. Hire more staff (say 2 to a truck as in the article) or hire night workers who can do the job faster. And of course traffic during rush hour moves more quickly.
Yes, NYC is spending a lot of time now dealing with noise issues. I’ve lived there and the night noise is horrible. So to the author of this blog post, it’s not so simple… unless Tory accompanies these measures with strict anti-noise (trucks idling, backing up, etc) regulation, there will be a lot of frustrated, sleep-deprived downtown residents.
Streetcars in Toronto were around long before cars were. They are an important part of Toronto’s transit system. If anything, more of them should be on rights of way. I’d be in favour of more subways on major routes, but they’re not going to happen unless you can get some rich Arab Sheikh to pony up the cash, or one or two of Toronto’s multi-billionaires. Like any of those things are going to happen. So we’re going to have to find ways of sharing the roads, both streetcars and cars. Maybe have two hours in the morning and evening when the streetcars can run unimpeded by traffic in their lanes, with no left turns permitted. Try it on one or two routes.
Ridiculous is letting business vehicles snarl up traffic at the expense of potentially thousands of other people.
What are you going to do? Email John Tory and ask for an exemption from breaking the law? This law favors anyone trying to get around Toronto during peak hours without having to deal with these idiots blocking lanes illegally.
High impact for sure — like a Mac truck slamming into a wall. Because the driver couldn’t be bothered to learn the rules. Or didn’t care about the rules. Or was reading while driving.
Man, I’d forgotten how easily this Ford material writes itself.
One of the well known coffee chains already provides their delivery guys with keys for their locations and you’ll regularly see their deliveries taking place outside of business hours, so that’s a great option
The reason downtown is thriving is because most people understand that there is a lot more to a successful urban environment than surface parking lots.
As a professional in the records management field I find this change potentially troubling – what happens when an Iron Mountain truck and the 100 boxes of private records they’ve collected gets towed and taken to the pound, potentially spending hours there? Chain of custody is very important for the safety of personal information, and we are still potentially decades away from the so-called “paperless office” so paper records are going to be around for a while yet. Should records management be expected to work late because people find Iron Mountain trucks inconvenient?
Just because it may not solve all the problems is not a reason to not do it. It does solve problems. Illegal parking is illegal parking. People being rightly ticketed and towed when they park where they shouldn’t is not a money grab. Yes there are many other things that should and can be done. In the meanwhile we should do nothing because no matter what is done, someone is not going to like it.
Yes.
Or perhaps change shift times, work when there is no traffic, say 10:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. that way you would avoid all the rush hour traffic. Lots of people have to work weird shifts, why should you be different?
Business vehicles have had a fee ride at our expense long enough. They will and can adjust. I was going to stop and pick up my dry cleaning the other day and then remembered nope, cant do that anymore. So I picked it up later. I don’t mind doing my part if everyone is treated the same.
because our function is to support regular staff, should all the staff be asked to work those irregular hours so that we can do our jobs?
I think you’re misunderstanding the new policy. Before, it was just ticketing for delivery trucks, because there was an understanding that the truck would be moving on in the near future. There was also a pre-rush hour swath to clear the sides of the street of cars, but then you usually just got a ticket if you parked there within the window and weren’t towed.
Now it’s immediate ticketing and towing. It’s very different, and you can see the difference on a lot of streets that would still be pretty congested. King is one of the biggest differences because it’s one of the most narrow main streets, but it’s not the only one that’s been helped.
Yes they should
These laws were in place already, he is just enforcing them. Do you really think delivery companies should just get to block city traffic? As discussed in the article, many of these businesses are open outside of the main workday but the deliveries come right at rush hour. Yes, it will take a period of adjustment, but traffic has been much better these past couple of weeks.
This happens everywhere. In every big city around the world!! Cities are noisy. If you buy a condo in the heart of downtown, you have to expect that there will be noise! People in downtown Toronto seem to think that living in an overpriced shoebox in the sky should somehow make you immune to noise. This is the risk you are taking when you purchase at that location. I was driving on the Gardiner and there are condos sitting not 100 feet from the highway. I often wonder that if there ever was a car accident where a vehicle jumps the guard rail, a car might land in someone’s living room! Surely the buyer of these condos hear the constant traffic outside and I’m sorry, I’m sure you saw the drawings of the condo during construction and noticed that you are extremely close to a highway! It is very similar to the homes in Mississauga that are in the direct flight path of planes landing at Pearson. There are signs in the neighbourhoods that warn you of the noise so if you buy a house there, expect noise from the airport!
As mentioned in the article, companies with trucks on deliveries that have no where else to park will just have to adjust. In many cases this just means having someone extra to drive the truck around the block rather than just park on the street. Whatever the solution, the burden needs to be on the companies themselves to work within the rules outlined and not just skirt the law. As someone in records management, following the rules of document handling is presumably very important to you. I would expect that you would demand the same sort of diligence from parking enforcement. Breaking the rules has consequences – the people of the city shouldn’t have to put up with congestion just so companies can save money/time with deliveries and document disposal.
That would make sense although I went to school with a girl who grew up in the core and she had never been north of Bloor in her entire life!! She is now 35 and had to drive on the 401 for work and actually ventured ‘up north….(her words) for the very first time in her life. Pretty sad but true
Um… North of the 401 (but South of Steeles) is still Toronto, so you can’t condemn Toronto without condemning it, too.
You can criticize the core, too, but actually, since you’re talking about small businesses, one of the best reasons to live downtown is that I can get to so many small businesses in my neighbourhood alone just by walking a couple minutes. As you move further North in the city, more of the residential areas are larger and quality shopping spaced farther apart and clustered together. When I went to school North of the 401, I usually had to take a bus 15-20 minutes in any direction before I got to anything I wanted to spend time at.
We live in an older neighbourhood in the core now that’s pretty awesome, and I walk everywhere, ditched our car (sometimes use a car share in a pinch), and our family’s much happier for it.
Use building loading docks / parking areas instead of parking illegally on the street. Find other legal parking areas. Might have to walk bit further, but hey, sometimes we all do.
And why should the rest of society have to pay for a few scofflaw businesses taking over public space for their own private business needs?
well, if you’ve been to the financial district you’ll probably notice that almost no buildings actually have dedicated loading and parking areas suitable to large vehicle traffic. and that isn’t just one company, that’s hundreds of companies that use services like iron mountain and private shredding to support daily business.
i’m honestly totally for this new crack-down on illegal parking, i’m just concerned about certain potential ramifications and who’s going to get the short end of the stick
What about the additional revenue the City was able to add to their coffers from all the fines? The City of Toronto wins all round. Fewer traffic jams are just one of the benefits. These companies will survive. Most will have to change the way they do business but that is life and about survival of the fittest. No point in trying to battle it out. Find a new way to survive in business and all will be fine.
Everyone wins in the end.
Awesome! If you illegally park to grab a coffee during rush hour, fuck you. You deserve to be towed. Hazards are not a “free parking” tool.
Should everyone have to have long commute times so a company can get deliveries when it suits them or should they (the companies) have to change for the greater good. All staff does not have to work irregular hours but some people may have to in order to allow deliveries, pickups, and shredding, during off peak hours or over night. I am sorry if you are the person effected but it is better than what was happening. Perhaps you job description will have to change. If your company got to pay the towing charges I bet they would change in a hurry.
The parking is not free. The companies that provide the parking make up for it in their rents. Nothing is free.
I don’t think the solution to the delivery problem is to force deliveries to happen at night.
Low wage workers, the kind who make deliveries of goods and services to the downtown core, deserve as much as anyone else to be home at night to enjoy family time when the kids are home from school and their partner is home from work. Most of us like to work a roughly 9-5 schedule. It shouldn’t become a privilege only white collar workers gets to enjoy.
The solution is to require developers to create neighbourhood delivery hubs–places where delivery trucks can park, and make a series of deliveries in the neighbourhood on foot or with a handcart.
Mayor Tory would rather oppress the low wage workers than to impose any obligation on his friends the developers.
Way to make this a class thing. That doesn’t sound ridiculous at all.
Yes, because god forbid the man make a decision on the basis of facts and data, as opposed to the crack (heh heh) decision making of the previous regime.
Tory said the results of the west end was proof enough. The crack decision saves us 11 million per year. That buys a lot of perks for the city councilors.
Do you really think low wage workers are the only people who work shift work? I’m a microbiologist at a pharmaceutical company, and do you think I work 9-5? Hell no! Regardless, your shiny happy view of “everyone should get to work 9-5” is pretty unrealistic, and kind of ridiculous. A job is a job, and they aren’t that easy to come by, particularly if you want a 9-5 one. Anyway, this isn’t a class issue, so I don’t know why you’re making it into one.
Frankly, I don’t have a problem with a leader who chooses to take a step back and re-consider previous pledges when presented with new information, which is the case here. The reason for the pause is that there are strong indications that any future savings from privatizing the east end garbage pickup won’t be as big as advertised, because the City workers have become more efficient, largely due to the threat of privatization, and competition with the private pickup in the west end. Given that the primary driver for this privatization push is cost savings, why should he go full speed ahead unless he’s certain that costs savings are still as high as previously indicated? Besides, the man has other priorities over a plan that in its most optimistic projection might result in savings that amount to less than 1% of Toronto’s annual budget. It’s not as if there’s some magical deadline after which we can’t still privatize it if it still makes sense to do so- that option is ALWAYS on the table. Hell, the THREAT of that option is what has led to more efficient service on the East side, so how is that not a good thing in the end?
I just don’t understand why its considered a negative for a politician to reconsider a previous pledge or decision, when presented with new facts. I get that politicians frequently backtrack from promises and that this is frustrating, but somehow we’ve come to put considerably more value on someone “doing what they said they’d do” even where it no longer makes any sense, than on sound decision making based on current accurate facts and data. Guys like Ford, George Bush or Mike Harris who were proponents of the former, left nothing but chaos in their wake so why is that an admiral trait in a political leader?
While the first week was great, the jerks are back shelfishly blocking traffic on Dundas St. W. I even saw a Canada Post truck doing it again. Park on the side street and walk the half block during rush hour! Also, morning rush hour should be extended to 9:30pm.
All the buildings in the financial core have the ability to park big trucks, most have elevators capable of handling tractor trailers
John Tory’s campaign was staffed by an assload of liberals, including Kathleen Wynne’s former campaign manager, you silly billy.
Why does everyone in Toronto complain about everything?! Our new mayor is taking steps to improve the lives of those living and working in the city. It is a small step and I am sure that other steps will follow – left/right hand turn lanes, bicycle lanes etc. Improvement will happen slowly and over time, but the key is that we are SEEING a shift. There are many alternative ways to running a city (night delivery schedules etc) and we should be exploring options that will help to improve our city overall. As someone who travels frequently, it boggles my mind how narrow focused and adverse to change Torontonians are. We have an inefficient transit system that city hall has been arguing over for decades. Why are we the only major city without a proper subway system? Tory suggested the ‘Smart Track in 7 years and now city council wants to spend over $1M to do more testing. What?? This is why our city will never ‘quite’ live up to its potential because nothing ever gets off the ground (so envious of NYC, London metro system). Get with it people – if we do not embrace change we will always be a city stuck in the past. Change and momentum will drive this city forward. I think Tory is doing a great job…one month in office and we are SEEING changes.
it has done the same for Queen St, there are still the odd idiot that park illegally, but for the most part they are getting a nice ticket, and a $150 coffee does taste significantly better than a $2 cuppa Joe.
Toronto is a city where everyone feel they have a right to inconvenience everyone else and like the article said, some are making millions breaking the law and clogging up the roads.
It’s pretty typical in most European cities to only allow deliveries during off peak hours. He writer nails it here when he points out what we were doing to shift costs from delivery businesses to commuters.
It most certainly can be absorbed. But why would they? You still need their services and now they have a legitimate reason to up costs. The demand is still there. It does not make any sense whatsoever to absorb it. Among the top big 3 couriers the prices are essentially the same, with a few discrepancies between them. When fuel goes up, so does our cost thus our price. When we are forced to hire more couriers because we are now walking mail men who can only deliver half as much as we could before, well you get the picture, our investors aren’t going to “Absorb” shit.
And looking at NA rates vs Euro rates I can see that they are almost double. Go figure, costs shift back to the people who need the service. A company can’t just absorb such a huge loss in profitable hours. Its simple math. Durp durp.