If it were up to average Torontonians, the city would have a lot more food trucks roaming the streets, according to a recent poll.

Half of the 882 respondents in the Forum Research survey said there aren’t enough food trucks in the city, while 25 per cent said the current number is about right.

Only 8 per cent believe that there are too many food trucks, while 17 per cent have no opinion.

“These are pretty lopsided findings, so it’s really clear that people think there are not enough food trucks,” said Lorne Bozinoff, president of Forum Research Inc. “We don’t get a lot of findings where 50 per cent agree on something, especially in this city, so this is a pretty significant finding.”

Results of the poll, conducted April 14, are nearly identical to a similar poll done last July.

On April 3, Toronto City Council voted in favour of letting mobile food vendors sell their products from surface parking lots and on-street parking spaces.

However, a fair number of regulations came with the decision to relax the rules that have kept food trucks from becoming as much a part of the scene as they are in many other cities.

Trucks can’t set up within 50 metres of a restaurant, no more than two trucks can operate on any block at one time, and trucks are limited to three hours per day at a single spot.

“I think the restaurant industry was very successful at instilling fear in city councillors,” Zane Caplansky, owner of Caplansky’s Delicatessen and a food truck, told the Star’s Daniel Dale on April 3. “I think what they’ve given us, though, is a glimmer of hope to be able to show what we can do, to dispel those fears over time.”

Among council’s concerns was a fear that food trucks would impede the business of local restaurants.

More than half of the people polled (53 per cent) don’t believe food trucks compete for customers with restaurants, while 33 per cent believe they do.

“It's clear that, whatever misgivings city council may have with food trucks, they are not shared by the public, nor is the fear they will drive restaurants out of business,” Bozinoff said in a news release that accompanied the poll’s results. “The authorities should listen more to the people who will patronize these mobile eateries, and less to those who see them as a threat.”

The poll, based on an interactive voice response telephone survey, also discovered that supporters of Olivia Chow and John Tory were more likely to support food trucks — 57 and 55 per cent respectively — than supporters of incumbent Rob Ford, at 35 per cent.

“I know it says 50 per cent, but of those who have an opinion, it’s more than 50 per cent, because there’s almost 20 per cent that don’t [have an opinion],” Bozinoff said. “If you take them out, it’s more like 60 per cent.”

“That’s huge.”

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More atthestar.com: Toronto has nothing to fear from food trucks, says Jennifer Bain