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Drivers beware: Parking spots painted on this Toronto street prove to be a ticket trap for confused motorists
The Canadian TV show This Hour Has 22 Minutes aired a shocking report on Sunday about how misled drivers could be in Toronto after discovering for the first time that spaces that should be used by the public are regularly reserved for commercial vehicles and vehicles with low load volumes.
“The parkers care less about your grief because they still have the ability to make you pay,” reporter Ben Thompson said, reporting from an unnamed location.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was shown video taken by a citizen who was left baffled by the triangular spaces reserved by Scarborough Bay Association (CBA), a neighbourhood community group in the northwest of the city.
The spaces have the words “no parking” painted on them, indicating that only residents are allowed to use them. Yet what the spot proves is that the CBA doesn’t need any official permission from the city for the spaces to be used.
As the CBA’s website explains, its members use the spaces “mostly to start and end drives”. According to its vice-president, Dave Skinner, a “number of residents use them all the time”.
The cars parked in the spots include several delivery trucks, garbage bins, grocery trucks and lots of smaller vehicles, including SUVs and pickups.
The spokesman for the city, Cynthia Mah, told Thompson in the segment that residents could have tried to arrange for a driver to meet them in the spot at a regular garage.
Some residents of Scarborough, according to Thompson, told him that they “found out and maybe didn’t know”, while some others claimed that they had made the situation “clearer”.
But many motorists have put the matter straight on Facebook using the hashtag #stuckinhare.
“With me it was pretty straightforward. I put up notice,” a driver whose SUV was left at the scene wrote. “All I did was insert my name and address in front of it.”
Many others on the city’s social media accounts criticised the use of the tight spots, where drivers are prone to finding themselves back on the street.
“Also,” posted another driver, “on an overcast winter day, parked in these spots is something I don’t mind doing for company.”