Tory’s illegal parking crackdown sees more than 600 parking tickets, 100 cars towed

TORONTO – Mayor John Tory’s crackdown on illegally parked vehicles has proven to be very effective, after just one day of ticketing and towing.

Tory announced an illegal parking blitz would start Oct.  5 and in the first day, more than 600 parking tickets have been issued and 100 cars towed during rush hour.

“It’s the only way I think we can change behaviour, which we have to do if the city is going to get moving,” Tory told Global News Monday.

“Traffic is sort of the human behaviour where people decide ‘I’m just going to take a minute to get a coffee, take a minute to take my dry cleaning in’ and we have to stop that. The signs have been up there for 30 years saying ‘no parking’ and ‘no stopping during rush hour’ and this is something we can change through law enforcement and through public education.”

Const. Clint Stibbe says Monday’s blitz was a successful one.

“What’s unfortunate is the number of people are being tagged and towed during rush hour routes,” Stibbe said.

“This isn’t something  new, this is the new normal… parking in those routes – even for a minute – is too long.”

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READ MORE: Drivers beware, fall parking blitz coming soon

Additional officers were assigned to the down town core on Monday to help crack down on illegally parked drivers.

“The parking enforcement do this on a regular basis, but where they do an area once or twice in a rush hour period, yesterday some of the officers were coming in to the area five, six, seven times,” said Stibbe.

Tory held a similar parking blitz in January 2015. Since then more than 53,000 tickets were issued and just under 11,000 cars were towed during rush hour.