Drivers blocking an intersection is a key cause of Toronto’s traffic misery. So why don’t they crack down on it?

This intersection is one of several hot spots in the downtown core for one of the biggest causes of congestion in the city, traffic analysts say: motorists who pull in to intersections when it’s obvious they won’t be able to clear it once the light changes. 

“Blocking the box” is an illegal move that appears to have a simple solution — increase the penalties for scofflaws — but the fact it persists raises questions about who is responsible for the enforcement of traffic laws in the city, and reveals why so many streets in core remain traffic choked. 

“People get frustrated and then they push their luck, hoping to make it through the intersection and they don’t,” said Baher Abdulhai, director of the Toronto Intelligent Transportation Systems Centre. “It’s like logs blocking a river.”

Blocking intersections is “not a joke,” he said, and can lead to gridlock, critical delays and even collisions. Last year, Toronto had the slowest traffic in North America, according to a report from geolocation firm TomTom.

Drivers may feel like they’re getting ahead in the moment, but Abdulhai said this actually makes congestion worse for everyone. He feels investing in improved transit and bike lanes are one way to curb this, but that harsher penalties are also necessary. 

Although intersections are blocked every day in Toronto, Sean Shapiro, a constable with Toronto Police’s traffic services, said few face consequences. Between January 2023 and when he spoke to the Star this week, only 166 drivers had been ticketed for blocking intersections — a sliver of the 200,000 tickets TPS issued last year, including about 66,000 for distracted driving.

“This is very, very low,” said Shapiro. “Quite frankly, if I sat at an intersection for a day, I could probably write that many (intersection blocking) tickets … it would be every time the light changes.”

However, he said police don’t have the time to focus on this infraction — the traffic offences they prioritize are speeding, aggressive driving, distracted driving and impaired driving, as the police priority is behaviour that is more often life-threatening. More than half of the 163 people killed on Toronto streets since 2021 are pedestrians, according to police.

There are 17 intersections across the downtown core — including several points on King, Lake Shore, Jarvis, Front and Spadina — where the city’s traffic agents direct the flow of vehicles throughout the day.

But these workers can’t be everywhere at once, and they can’t even ticket those they see blocking intersections. They would have to call on a Toronto police officer nearby to write the tickets for them, said Shapiro.

City council voted in March to ask the province to raise the fine for intersection blocking to $450 from $90 (and to $500 from $120 in community safety zones) — something a spokesperson for the city said it plans to apply for “in the near future.” 

However, Dakota Brasier, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Transportation, wrote in an email that “Section 145 of the Highway Traffic Act already provides municipalities with the bylaw authority to create an offence for unnecessarily blocking an intersection,” adding that setting traffic bylaws and fines are within the city’s control.

The city is also looking at using red light cameras to ticket the owners of vehicles that block intersections, but it said the province would need to amend the Highway Traffic Act to make that possible.

Roger Browne, director of traffic management for the city of Toronto, said that fines are a welcome deterrent — but to be effective, they have to be matched with enforcement, something he said they’re working with the Toronto police on developing a strategy for, as well as penalties for blocking transit and bike lanes. Automation, he said, could play a significant role in cracking down on these issues.

“Automated speed enforcement has had a very, very significant impact, both in terms of what we’re seeing in the data and also what we’re hearing anecdotally,” he said, adding that the cameras don’t have to be ubiquitous to be effective.

“Just (with) the awareness that it’s out there, people immediately start being a little bit more cautious, which is really what we want to achieve.”

However, Browne said it will take the province changing the current laws to make this possible.

Even though there’s a long road ahead before drivers are likely to be ticketed for illegally blocking an intersection, Shapiro said there is a simpler, although more unlikely, path to clearer streets. 

“What could change tomorrow is that people could all be courteous to one another and start following the rules,” he said. “I know it’s a big ask and it’s unrealistic, but that would negate the reasons for more enforcement and other technology to do the work that simply being a good neighbour would effectively create.”