Toronto towing crackdown yet to prove effective

On October 5, Toronto Mayor John Tory launched another tag-and-tow blitz in attempt to speed up the rush hour commute. After the first day of this crackdown, police issued nearly 700 tickets and towed 100 vehicles, reports the Toronto Sun.

But despite these numbers, can a program such as this actually get traffic moving faster?

That's what the Globe and Mail wanted to find out when it asked GPS company TomTom to study traffic conditions on downtown Toronto roads. TomTom analyzed Richmond, Adelaide, Spadina, Yonge and Gerrard at peak morning and evening hours. It looked at traffic conditions from the first four months of 2015 in comparison to 2014.

Based on this, TomTom found that traffic on only two streets, Richmond in the morning and southbound Spadina in the evening, improved. The Globe quotes TomTom as saying that based on its data, no-stopping campaigns alone aren't making a making a "dramatic, measurable difference."

However, this study had many limits. For example, it couldn't account for all traffic in the city as well as other factors (such as construction) that might have increased travel times. And, as the Globe notes, TomTom can't conclusively say whether or not tag-and-tow rules made a difference in terms of speeding traffic.

Photo by Dan Mofo in the blogTO Flickr pool.

by Amy Grief via blogTO