The City of Toronto will increase parking fines for more than 100 offences to help stop illegal parking, stopping, and standing in high-traffic areas as of Aug. 1.
The City noted in a news release that the goal of the increased fines is to help reduce congestion and encourage people to use other modes of transportation, such as walking, cycling, or public transit.
The fines will crack down the hardest on drivers whose illegal parking could impact the safety of cyclists and pedestrians — the fine for parking a prohibited vehicle on a bicycle path, a footpath or a pedestrian way all saw the largest increase, from $60 to $200.
This comes after a cyclist was hit and killed on Bloor Street last week, drawing attention to the danger of vehicles and other items obstructing bike lanes. Early reports found that a dumpster was occupying the bike lane, causing the cyclist to veer into the main road, where she was struck by a large dump truck.
Other large increases include the fine for stopping within an intersection or pedestrian crossover — which also will be increasing from $60 to $200.
The new measures come after fines increased from $30 to $75 (a 150 per cent increase) for drivers caught illegally parking on municipal and private property late last year.
Toronto city councillors voted in favour of raising parking fines for approximately 123 offenses back in April after approving a city staff report conducted by the Transportation Services committee, which analyzed other Canadian municipalities to compare similar parking offences and their penalty amounts to those of Toronto.
“The recommended increase in penalty amounts will ensure better alignment with penalty amounts in other jurisdictions, encourage compliance, ensure certain offences are set at levels commensurate with the seriousness of the offence, and ensure that offences within the same categories are set at the same penalty amount for consistency,” the March 2024 report for action stated.
The report also stated that the Toronto Police Service’s Parking Enforcement Unit (PEU) will experience
“additional financial and operational impacts” due to the parking penalty increases, and that they will need to align updated electronic parking enforcement e-ticketing software updates and manual parking tickets with the new penalty increases. The PEU will receive $150,000 in additional City funds this year to buy approximately 400,000 parking tickets to update their current manual parking stock.
As for how much the City will make from the increased fines — looking at the 2023 level of offence volumes, the City could possibly collect an additional $62 million in revenue, although it is expected that the actual revenue increase would be in the $40 to $50 million range.
For more on how to pay or dispute a parking violation, visit the City’s Parking Violations webpage.