I took a drive from my North York apartment to visit a friend on the West side late last week and decided to forgo my usual highway route in favour of an in-town trip. It was about 5 p.m. when I headed out – peak traffic time for the city. Normally I hate hitting the core at that time of day, but I was in no hurry, so I putted along at an easy pace and just went with the flow.

After about 10 minutes of reasonable traffic conditions, I was forced to slam on my brakes when a van that was appeared parked by the curb decided to lurch unannounced back into traffic. People in the city tend to be aggressive drivers as a rule, so I initially ignored it, until I realized the driver had been on his cell phone. Further down the road, traffic slowed again when a woman unloading her luggage from a taxi left a bag sitting halfway into the centre lane. Cars creeped and squeezed their way around her as she squared up with the cab driver, clueless to the annoyance she was causing.

By the end of the 25-minute trip I had seen no less than seven cars or pick-up trucks sitting in the right-hand lane – most either dropping people off or talking on their cell phones and all of which slowed traffic to a crawl.
I saw but one truck during the drive: a cube van hugging the right-hand curb while making a delivery. My fellow commuters and I passed around the truck with relative ease compared to those other seven cars we’d already passed. For one, at least we could see that the truck was stopped from further away simply because the truck was much taller than your average Honda Civic. The trucks’ four-ways were also flashing and the orange pylons had been placed behind the truck to allow motorists more space when maneuvering around it. In all, I felt much less hostility toward that truck driver than I did towards those other seven motorists.

Toronto Councillor Michael Walker's proposed ban would remove these trucks from the city’s downtown core during peak rush hour times, but who will remove these careless four-wheelers? How can we expect both truckers and their customers to put their lives and their businesses on hold while cars continue to block those same lanes – and in much greater numbers?

Walker’s proposal seems to be a quick-fix solution for a problem that extends way beyond trucks slowing traffic. It’s more of a general distaste for trucking. Walker’s ban would only serve to tarnish the public’s already shaky view of the industry. The feeling that “trucks are big and slow and they get in my way” is the same egocentric view that causes drivers in Toronto to be so thoughtless in the first place.

If Walker’s ban goes through, it will impede the flow of goods and services in a way that the public just doesn’t understand. Without trucks delivering four-wheelers’ cell phones and luggage, how will they be able to block traffic?