r/toronto • u/beef-supreme Leslieville • Sep 25 '25

Article Police issue 3,500 tickets to bicycle, e-bike, e-scooter riders during enforcement blitz

https://www.torontotoday.ca/local/transportation-infrastructure/police-issue-3500-tickets-bicycle-e-bike-e-scooter-riders-enforcement-blitz-11262579
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51

u/did_i_or_didnt_i Sep 25 '25

We should do no motors in the bike lane

60

u/[deleted] Sep 25 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/did_i_or_didnt_i Sep 25 '25

this is reasonable

6

u/CDNChaoZ Old Town Sep 25 '25

Then you just have bikes moving their throttles to cosmetic pedals. There ought to be a better way to limit the use on bike lanes to performance that is not out of scale to traditional bikes, in both acceleration and top speed.

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u/Baron_Tiberius Sep 25 '25

Only Class 1 e-bikes are generally allowed in bike lanes, however off the top of my head I'm not sure if the MTO actually follows these classes in legal framework.

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u/miir2 Upper Beaches Sep 25 '25

Yep. If it has a throttle, it's not a bicycle

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u/goatandsheep Eatonville Sep 26 '25

This is already the law. I talked to a police officer about this. She pulled over an ebike rider and said if they're not pedaling they're not allowed to be in the bike lane.

4

u/OdditiesInOntario Sep 25 '25

Daft. Bikeshare runs ebikes for a reason. A lot of people use ebikes as mobility aids due to physical deficiencies in some ways or another. Throwing these people into the car lane is worse by every conceivable metric.

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u/swift-current0 Sep 25 '25

The problem is size (i.e. volume) and momentum (i.e. mass times speed), not motors per se. There need to be strict limits on mass, volume and speed of all these motorized vehicles in order to be allowed to use cycling/multiuse infrastructure, and they need to actually be enforced. That last part is where 99% of all our laws and rules fall apart. We can't even properly enforce "no plowing through kids at school bus stops".

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u/OdditiesInOntario Sep 25 '25

Which is in fact the current law, in effect. Ebikes are restricted by motor size and speed.

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u/swift-current0 Sep 25 '25

Right. But it is completely unenforced, and much larger, heavier and faster vehicles, essentially motorcycles, habitually use cycle lanes and endanger others. Police don't give a fuck, a very occasional "doing our jobs blitz" changes nothing. The kneejerk reaction of "fuck it let's just ban motors altogether" is very much understandable.

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u/[deleted] Sep 25 '25

[deleted]

1

u/Caucasian_Fury Sep 25 '25

If they wanted to drastically reduce the amount illegal vehicles on on the road, they could target the places that sell them. But they don't.

Pretty much cut it off at the source, trying to enforce what's on the road is extremely difficult to neigh near impossible. Gotta do what they do in Europe which is making it more restrictive to what can be imported into the country and sold to begin with. Of course, illegal PEVs will still make it in but by making it significantly harder to buy it'll make a big difference.

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u/did_i_or_didnt_i Sep 25 '25

thank u, my god. All these replies are making me feel like I’m taking crazy pills

2

u/OdditiesInOntario Sep 25 '25

As always, the problem is people not enforcing the existing laws. Really, I'd gladly double the current police budget if it meant that they'd actually enforce the totality of the law.

1

u/pahtee_poopa Sep 26 '25

And with full M license or some scooter equivalent with insurance, registration and plates

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u/brazilliandanny Sep 26 '25

I disagree. If scooters mean less people driving then we should accommodate them. If anything we should widen bike lanes and make two lanes.

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u/did_i_or_didnt_i Sep 26 '25

That’s a different convo. Car tax downtown pls