I like CP24. It’s a useful channel, and does some good local features. I can even imagine that in rare instances, for a breaking news story on a busy road with no parking, their vehicles might have to mount the sidewalk.
However, there were no breaking news stories in my neighbourhood today — in fact, I saw the news anchor walking leisurely down the street with no cameras in sight, perhaps to get lunch. And my local street is not busy, and in any case there’s plenty of space on the street since there is parking at night. So why this?
Sure, there’s no parking on this street during the day. But do they seriously consider that parking half-way on the sidewalk makes it somehow better?
Sidewalks are for pedestrians. Sidewalks take up far less space than roads. So at least give us walkers that, without encroaching vehicles onto the sidewalk too. You don’t see pedestrians sitting in couches in the middle of the road, do you?
At the pedestrian committee, one of our members conducted a long and depressingly futile campaign to get the police to stop parking on sidewalks for no reason. Somehow, people who feel they have urgent business (police, courier companies, delivery trucks, TV news) seem to feel that parking on the sidewalk is their right, even when there’s no actual urgency. I suspect it makes them feel important: “Look, I’m in such a rush I have to park on the sidewalk!”
Really, you don’t. Park on the street where you belong. We won’t think less of you. In fact, we’ll think better of you.
7 comments
And please don’t park in the bicycle lanes. Thanks.
Please complain to CityTV. 🙂
of course, cars can’t pull up on the sidewalk if the sidewalk is lined with bike parking! perhaps it’s time to leaflet the neighbourhood with applications for post-and-ring installations:
http://www.toronto.ca/cycling/pdf/postandring_request_form.pdf
It’s because drivers are more concerned about being courteous to other drivers (by taking up less space on the road) than to pedestrians, cyclists, or anyone else.
And that’s not saying much.
Gah, news vans. Last year around Taste of the Danforth time, I watched a CTV van go barreling the wrong way down a quiet one-way street, a block from my place. On some kind of mission from the gods of journalism, no doubt. Slipped my mind at the time, but if it ever happens again, I’ll have some words for their team.
Next time, note the date, time and vehicle number and plate number, call the news agency, and lodge a complaint. 5 minutes after you get off the phone, if the vehicle is still there. call the police. They will send a parking enforcement officer to ticket the vehicle….
W
Hmmmm
Tricky one. I used to shoot video for a local broadcaster and found this type of “park anywhere – I’m shooting” attitude tends to influence one’s every parking occasion. My date (now my wife) used to complain when I did the same thing with my own personal car. One can take the whole shooting gung-ho thing too far.
Happily I’ve now been cured of that type of thinking and cycle everywhere and this is where a less than perfect answer is sometimes better.
I find drivers pull over to the right, bike lane or not, and block a whole lane for a variety of reasons – to make a cell call, to pick some one up, etc. As this forces all other traffic to bunch up behind them or for bikes to have to merge into heavy traffic to get around them I often encourage drivers to pull up on the sidewalk as a way of freeing up a little roadspace.
A really good example of this is Dundas just west of Yonge between the Eaton Centre and the Gap/Atrium. Drivers pull over there all the time to pick up office working spouses or to pick up a hot dog or whatever. This bottleneck totally jams up Dundas at that point delaying the eastbound streetcar and screwing up bike safety. So I speak to drivers and suggest that it would help everyone if they would pull up on the sidewalk and make a little room.
Not perfect of course but a gray-ish solution in a definitely not black and white world.
– Dabusan