Video of drivers ignoring King Street pilot has critic questioning police enforcement

A taxi, then a black sedan, park in a TTC streetcar stop at King Street West and Peter Street.

A growling Maserati leads a stream of cars going straight through that intersection, while at least two more vehicles make illegal left turns.

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Nearly every motorist in the one-minute-and-nine-second video is breaking the rules of the King Street pilot project, the city's high-profile attempt to improve streetcar service in the downtown core.

Not one driver, not even the driver filmed breaking the law right in front of a police cruiser, appears to get a ticket. 

"Literally zero people obeying the rules. None," Pedro Marques, who recorded the video and posted it on Twitter, says in the video.

Warning: At one point in the embedded video music plays that includes an explicit lyric.

Marques posted the video last Saturday night to criticize police enforcement of the pilot's rules.

"If nobody obeys the rules and the cops aren't enforcing the rules, we're going to end up back in the same gridlock," Marques told CBC Toronto.

When the city launched the pilot last November, police staged a ticketing blitz that netted thousands of dollars in fines. But the force seems to have backed off from that level of enforcement since then.

Officers can't enforce King rules 24/7, police say

Const. Clint Stibbe, spokesperson for Toronto police's traffic services division, said in an email to CBC Toronto that enforcement is occurring on King, but "officers cannot be there 24/7."

Stibbe admits there are problems on King Street, which faces "unique challenges," but said the problem is the same downtown as it is across the city. 

"Violations like these occur on streets throughout the city, because drivers are not driving according to the rules," he said.

John Quarterly, driving on King Street Monday, criticized the pilot, calling it "all politics and no logic."

"This is insane. Nobody knows how to plan traffic flow in this city," he told CBC Toronto. "A kid could do better than this."

City data shows the pilot is providing benefits for commuters.

There's been a 16 per cent increase in ridership on King cars, while travel time has improved by four to five minutes during the evening commute in both directions. 

Marques, a resident of King Street, said he supports the pilot but would like to see the rules for drivers be made "more intuitive," and enforcement be turned over to an agency other than Toronto police.

"Having streetcars be reliable again is great, Toronto needs reliable transit," Marques said. "But having cars basically disobeying the rules will put the project in peril."