news Rob Ford Truck Touting “Respect For Taxpayers” Ironically Parks Disrespectfully Over Taxpayer-Serving Bike Lane







Photos by Linda Noelle Bush.



On Monday evening, at around 6 p.m., Linda Noelle Bush was inside her house on Annette Street near Indian Road Crescent when, she says, “I noticed the lack of light in my front room. All I could see was FORD!”

What she found outside her house was an immense Rob Ford campaign truck, longer than Bush’s house is wide, parked so that it blocked part of Annette’s eastbound bike lane with its side and a neighbourhood alleyway with its front. Bush figures that it was parked there for about an hour, but, she says, “I didn’t get a knock on my door…maybe my garden looks too lefty!” (“I wanted to egg it,” she adds, “but was just getting my young son to bed.”)

Back in July, a George Smitherman staffer caught a Joe Pantalone campaign smart car parked over top of a Harbord Street bike lane. Mike Smith, Pantalone’s spokesperson, told the Sun then that his boss’s tiny car was parked there for just “thirteen seconds.” Some competition.

While Ford has said previously that “roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks, not for people on bikes,” his campaign’s director of communications, Adrienne Batra, told Torontoist over the phone on Wednesday that any obstruction of the Annette bike lane “was certainly unintentional.” The truck’s driven by volunteers, she explained, and “with a vehicle of that size, it’s sometimes challenging to keep it between the lines.”

Bush, meanwhile, is leaning towards Keith Cole for mayor—but says she’ll vote for Smitherman if that’s what it’d take to prevent Ford from winning.

Thanks to Tyler Clark Burke for the tip.