Councillor Karen Stintz, chair of the TTC and potential candidate for mayor, says she is fighting a $110 ticket she was given Thursday morning for allegedly rolling through a midtown stop sign on her bicycle.

Her compelling-sounding defence: the stop sign does not exist.

“It was really strange, actually,” Stintz (Ward 16, Eglinton-Lawrence) said in an interview.

A police officer, Stintz said, pulled her over “seven blocks” from the intersection where he alleged she had failed to stop, Duplex Ave. and Berwick Ave., near Yonge and Eglinton.

She concedes that she did “rolling stops,” not “complete stops,” at other stop signs along her route to city hall. At Duplex and Berwick, though, there is no stop sign in the direction in which the ticket confirms she was travelling.

She did not realize this, she said, until after her exchange with the officer.

“He went into his car,” she said, “and I figured, OK, I’m going to get a warning. And he came out with a $110 ticket. I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? Are you serious?’”

The Star asked the police Thursday for basic data on the number of tickets issued to cyclists. But a spokeswoman, Const. Wendy Drummond, said the information could only be obtained through a freedom of information request.

Stintz, a twice-a-week cyclist, posted a photo of her ticket on Twitter. She tweeted last year that she had received a warning for a similar alleged violation, writing: “Just got pulled over by Toronto’s finest for rolling through a stop-sign on my bike. Pls cycle safely ;).”

“I am a safe cyclist,” she said Thursday. “Which is, like, the most ridiculous part of this entire thing.” She noted, laughing, that she uses both a helmet and a bell.

On Twitter, she wrote: “Sorry it couldn’t be a juicier ‘running afoul of the law’ story, everyone. Alleged story, of course.”

She added: “I love Toronto Police but suggest less of an enforcement clampdown on cyclists and more of one on King transit lanes.”

The spokesman for the police traffic division could not be reached for comment. An officer in the division, who would not provide his name, said tickets that list incorrect intersection information are quashed.

Stintz’s tweets were largely greeted with amusement. “Probably a calculated move by Karen Stintz, trying to make her edgier for the downtown crowd for 2014,” wrote Twitter user Andrew Tumulty.

“Eh — she gets marks from me for riding her bike,” wrote former Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment chief executive Richard Peddie.

Stintz arrived late for the 10 a.m. meeting of council’s striking committee. Because only two members of the six-person committee were on time, the meeting had to be postponed until 1:30 p.m.

Councillor Doug Ford was one of the four councillors absent at 10 a.m. Three weeks ago, Ford publicly blasted Councillor Jaye Robinson for missing a committee meeting when she was bedridden with an illness.

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Doug Ford told reporters later on Thursday that his absence and Robinson’s absence were not comparable. He had merely been running late, he said, while Robinson did not come at all.

“I’m here. I work every day. I work seven days a week. Okay? So don’t put the same comparison, because she didn’t bother showing up. I’m here. I would have been five, 10 minutes late, but I would have been there. And I’m here today. And I work seven days a week, 18 hours a day for this city and the people of this city,” Ford said.

With files from Robyn Doolittle

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