Someone in a silver Acura got eyes rolling and heads turning in Toronto this weekend with an outrageous traffic manoeuvre that, while dangerous and highly illegal, wasn’t the worst thing observed on the streets of Parkdale at the time.
Video footage sent to blogTO, shot by a reader on Sunday afternoon, shows a compact car driving eastbound on the southern sidewalk of Queen Street West, right in front of the Shopper’s Drug Mart at Fuller Avenue.
Incredulous bystanders can be heard laughing in disbelief, wondering aloud, “what’s going on?”
As the car skirts past a traffic jam and gets back onto the road, someone can be heard in the background saying arguing, essentially, that the driver simply did what they had to do.
“It’s not his fault,” shouts a male voice, panning toward a row of stopped vehicles, including at least two streetcars, on Queen. “It’s f*ckng blocked.”
A Toronto driver was caught on camera this weekend using the sidewalk to skirt traffic in Parkdale after a delivery truck blocked off streetcar tracks and brought Queen Street West to a halt.
📹 : Tenzing Ngawang https://t.co/425uxjvEau pic.twitter.com/GHbbypjoES
— blogTO (@blogTO) January 23, 2023
It fast becomes apparent that the TTC vehicles can’t move forward on account of a large white cube van blocking the streetcar tracks.
“Do you know whose truck this is? We can’t get by,” says an apparent TTC employee to the person filming as he approaches. “We can’t get by.”
“It’s all because of this truck?” asks the camera person, who eventually concludes that “everyone’s lined up… all because of one idiot.”
Viral TikTok shows multiple cars blocking streetcar tracks in Toronto on the same day – blogTO: https://t.co/Vwag2z87DO #TTC #GoTransit #GoTrain #GoBus #Transit #Toronto #Transportation
— MyTransit Toronto (@MyTransit_TO) January 20, 2022
The Instagram user who sent the clip to blogTO posted a Story later on Sunday showing the truck driving away without any sort of repercussion, noting that something needs to be done about this kind of behaviour.
Anyone who has ever been stuck in traffic for this reason would wholeheartedly agree, going so far as to argue that the streetcar tracks should be removed along Queen for this very reason.
Some are also giving props to the driver who used the sidewalk to get around traffic, forgetting, perhaps, that this action could have killed a vulnerable sidewalk user.
Under the Toronto Municipal Code, “no person shall drive a vehicle upon a sidewalk or footpath on a highway except for the purpose of directly crossing the sidewalk or footpath.”
Toronto Police have yet to respond to a request for comment, but they should have no issues if they choose to pursue the driver, thanks to the person who filmed the video and made sure to get clear shots of the truck’s licence plate.
