oliver-moore.bsky.social
@moore_oliver
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Deviant pedestrian. I care about cities and write editorials for The Globe and Mail. Essentially inactive here. Find me where the skies are blue
Joined July 2011
The reason most cities don’t do this may shock you. Once you understand that traffic engineers consider the sidewalk to be a “recovery zone” — into which vehicles should be able to hurtle without damage to their paint — you’ll just can’t unlearn it.
This week I received intel that CDOT is evaluating street treatments like this. Keep up the advocacy. Urban rocks are the fastest way to make an intersection safe.
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N. America: I need a truck to haul stuff. Asia: yeah, us too
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Asked about why his govt didn't act sooner re Ottawa protests, Premier Ford, who unilaterally cut Toronto council in half in the midst of an election campaign, says he's not one for barging into another jurisdiction.
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Well that’s jarring. Lots of white-bike memorials around but think this is the first time I’ve seen a ghost wheelchair
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Washington DC will charge owners of the biggest vehicles seven times the registration fee for a normal sedan.
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Imagine hating people who ride bikes enough to take the time and effort to do this. Richmond, east of Brant
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True fact: The Globe once referred to Meat Loaf in print as Mr. Loaf.
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A delivery rider in line at the food bank is a note-perfect symbol of Toronto today
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Ontario Premier promises to take bike lanes off Bloor. Inbox, BIA repping 270 businesses there says they: . "a firm believer in the actual evidence that concludes that bike lanes on Bloor Street are good for business, improve safety for all road users, and reduce congestion".
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Even during the Kensington jazz festival the city can’t find it in itself to stop people driving through the market, leaving performers and crowds to gather precariously wherever they can
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Ship carrying coal collided with one carrying windmill components, in some sort of metaphor for our economy
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Public officials are harsher in their criticism of people in parks, at toboggan hills and on rinks than cabinet ministers going to St. Barts.
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It's that time of year when people in positions of authority say that road safety is a responsibility shared between adults driving 3000-pound cars and kids walking to school.
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The Times does a lot of great work, but this is embarrassing.
Many Canadians are giddy at the prospect that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle could be moving to Canada, injecting some razzle dazzle to the sprawling, bone-chillingly cold country.
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Inbox, from city of Toronto: installing cafes and bike infra on Yonge St led to big jumps in pedestrian and cycling usage while affecting peak period drive-times by “generally less than one minute (plus/minus).” There were “no spillover travel time impacts” on parallel corridors.
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Pedestrian bridges are not built to keep pedestrians safe. They are built so that drivers are not slowed by pedestrians.
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Is there a better symbol for our times than a Peloton delivery vehicle parked in a bike lane?.
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So the official line is that people walking *on the sidewalk* in the downtown city need to be hyper-vigilant and ready to dive out of the way of an airborne SUV? 🤨.
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Toronto, a city that clears snow from a municipal parking lot but not from the adjacent sidewalk
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Pretty stark rendering of traffic collisions, via the @TorontoStar, makes abundantly clear that suburban design kills
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Hot take: it’s not reasonable to expect to be able to drive quickly in a city.
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Fun fact about the most walk-hostile intersection in Canada: those concrete barriers preventing people crossing on foot are painted only on the outside. Prettied up for those they convenience, not those they inconvenience
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Toronto puts a vehicle-attack security layer around city hall, discovers that what people really need is somewhere to sit
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Inbox, Saunders campaign criticises Chow for wanting "the parking area in front of 52 Division . replaced by flowers". The fact that the former chief thought a public plaza was police parking may help explain why cops kept parking there.
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This is sort of the Toronto city hall version of the flag at Buckingham Palace, a bike that indicates the mayor is in
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So weird that you can get on high-speed trains in Europe less than one minute before departure, and yet they still manage to keep the system running smoothly. This was thought up by people who don't ride transit.
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Unpopular take, but:. Toronto traffic isn't going to get better. This project might get done or that issue sorted out, but it's still going to be slow. The days of driving fast in this city are long past.
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Remember the months of anti-lockdown/mask rallies and marches? Police escorted them and treated them with kid gloves.
Video moments ago as Toronto Police move in and begin arresting those inside the homeless encampment at Lamport Stadium @CityNews
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Galen Weston said a customer confronted him the other day about food prices and he explained the underlying factors to her. "And she said, okay, I didn't realize that, that's not the way it's being characterized when I read the Globe and Mail or when I read the Toronto Star".
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Courier drivers have become so comfortable parking on the sidewalk in Toronto that often now they drive a stretch on the sidewalk from one drop to the next. It’s a real sign of the social contract breaking down.
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Honest question, no snark: if you can afford $6.4M for a home and can thus live in any city in the world, why Toronto?
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Strap in, Toronto, cause this will blow your mind. In 2015 Paris started work on a major transit expansion. Said first phase -- eight km of heavy rail, all underground -- would be done in 2024. And this week, less than half way through 2024, it opened.
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What's the point of having leading pedestrian intervals if you don't also ban right turns on red?.
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Downtown Toronto rn is an absolute shit-show of red-light runners, box-blockers and drivers going into incoming traffic to get around box-blockers. Evidently time to crack down harder on pedestrians crossing during the countdown.
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Would it be grinch-y to wonder why an airport with some of highest landing fees in the world uses volunteers to manage passenger traffic flow?.
For your convenience, we’ve added more than 30 new volunteers to our Welcome Team and placed them strategically throughout the terminals to help passengers get to their flight on time.
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Tepid take: in a city of 3 million it shouldn't require a media brouhaha and councillor intervention for a corner store to have a legal coffee machine.
This afternoon, I received an update from MLS with confirmation that Finch Store’s business licence is 'deemed to continue' and a report to the Licensing Tribunal will be deferred until City Council makes a decision on the Neighbourhood Retail & Services Study.
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So it seems that Toronto police ticket pedestrians for crossing against the signal, including during the countdown, about five-six times as often as they ticket drivers for blocking the box . (Sourcing in next tweets).
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How did you get radicalised?. Toronto pedestrian: I tried to walk to the store the morning after a moderate snowfall.
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Cop’s reaction to a bunch of pedestrians being hit *on the sidewalk* is essentially that safety is a shared responsibility:. “Macias urged pedestrians and drivers alike to pay close attention to their surroundings … ‘pedestrians unfortunately, have to keep their eyes open’.”.
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In Toronto, the police literally crap on the bike lanes
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A pair of streetcars that can together carry 260 pax impeded by some dingus blocking the box *for an entire light cycle”. If transit riders were seen as equal citizens this ubiquitous behaviour would be dealt with very quickly.
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Toronto, a city where nearly half of residents rent, continues to act as though everyone has a backyard.
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Arguing that there shouldn’t be a subway line serving the densest part of the nation’s biggest city because there is already a streetcar line is … bold.
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The whole *without cars' pollution and noise and congestion and chance of death cities would be boring* is one of the weirdest takes.
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"it is impossible to trust an elected official who would even entertain perverting democracy in the way the Ford government is proposing. Mr. Tory was elected to defend the interests of Toronto residents. Instead, he is selling them out".
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Hot take: someone who dashes across an intersection in the last three seconds of the countdown is practically no different than a slow walker who takes the whole cycle to cross.
Here’s a another video in our ‘road safety is a shared responsibility’ series. Traffic signals are set up to keep us safe and to keep traffic moving. Not following the rules can be dangerous, clog things up, and lead to frustrations. #RoadSafety
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Took a hard fall and am reminded again of how little Toronto cares about pedestrians. Every road in the city is clear, bare and dry, while the paths in most parks are massive sheets of ice.
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BREAKING -- Toronto mayoral candidate Gil Penalosa promises to replace city's downtown airport with a 215-acre park. (narrator: he wouldn't have the power to do this himself, which he appears to grasp by saying he would work with feds on next life for site).
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The amazingly popular pedestrian Sunday in Toronto’s Kensington Market offers basically no where to #sitTO. Either buy something from a local business or your options are a concrete barrier and the curb
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How fast does an SUV have to be going to be “launched in the air” and “turned on its side like a missile”?.
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How blinded by windshield bias do you need to be to portray a pedestrian walking in a crosswalk, with lights flashing, and say it’s partly her fault if she gets hit by a driver looking at his phone.
Pedestrian safety is a two-way street. What pedestrians and drivers can do to make our roadways safer
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Ontario medical profession: avoid non-essential trips and stay home as much as possible. Board member for foundation of leading Canadian kids’ hospital: time to visit The Donald.
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You can imagine the brain-storming down at city hall/police HQ. Right guys, I’ve got a great vision zero idea. Are you ready for this? Parkour training for pedestrians.
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How could anyone use a bike to get groceries or take their kids to school, wonders man running to be mayor of Canada’s capital and fourth-largest city.
Add to that a quarter of a billion dollars on bike lanes. Ottawa needs transportation priorities that work for them. Whether your getting groceries, taking your kids to school, getting to the community centre for hockey practice. Bike lanes aren't going to help you with that.
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Tenants are just supposed to intuit whether or not their landlord is foreign?.
The CRA confirms that tenants are responsible for withholding 25% of their foreign landlords' rent and paying it to the CRA — something almost no one was aware of a month ago. "The Government of Canada continuously reviews the tax system to ensure it is both fair and efficient."
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Waterloo police first out of the gate, that I have seen. “We will not be conducting random vehicle or individual stops”.
As we review the new #COVID19 provincial regulations announced today, please note that we will continue to focus on the 4 Es when it comes to enforcement. We will not be conducting random vehicle or individual stops. For more information, visit:
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The idea that 99pc of Toronto drivers are law-abiding is wildly at odds with reality.
She said 99 per cent of drivers are not a problem and will benefit from the increased enforcement. (Having driven around a bit recently I think 99 per cent is generous!)
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Edmonton is looking flipping the property tax structure -- charging more for low density than multi-unit -- in a bid to encourage the kind of development the city's plan claims it wants. It probably doesn't need to be said that this would be controversial.
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And people say Toronto can't get transit built
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I’m old enough to remember when some people argued the LRT couldn’t go up Main St in Brampton to preserve the city’s historic downtown
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Hot take: It's pretty weird that cities have giant pipes of drinkable water running under them but force people who venture out of their home, or who don't have one, to buy bottled water.
HELP NEEDED! A heatwave is arriving next week. For unhoused people, bottled water is an emergency health care need in the deadly summer heat. This is why I'm working with @PFoodchain to fundraise for and distribute 236,160 bottles of water. Can you donate?
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Inbox: mayoral candidate Gil Penalosa releases safe streets plan that includes. - banning right turns on red;.- getting rid of distracting billboards; and.- putting sidewalks on at least one side of all roads that don’t have them, whether or not the local councillor wants it.
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“Are we building highways or are we building main streets?” says Brian Burchell, general manager of the Bloor Annex BIA. “Because highways don’t encourage main street economic activity.”.
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per the census, Toronto is up about 450,000 people since then -- an 18pc rise. In inflation-adjusted terms the police budget is up 31pc. There's only 37 more cops?.
Did you know Toronto has only 37 more police officers than in 1999, despite population growth of more than 600,000 and a 35% increase in emergency calls. #SupportYourTPS
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Almost as many fare inspectors as passengers on the 504 streetcar. City doesn’t bother to enforce street parking rules on the stat but pays holiday OT rates to patrol for transit scofflaws.
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A Toronto heritage moment: .Driver 1 decides not to proceed through a stale yellow, hits his brakes. Driver 2, behind him, who would have been blasting through a full red by the time she arrived at the intersection, is irate at being stopped and lays on the horn.
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That sign lies squarely on the tracks of the busiest streetcar route in North America.
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This shot of Andrea Magalhaes at the TTC bench where her teenage son was killed is a picture of the year. Devastating
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Hot take: shaming people for driving to parks during #covid19 is effectively saying they are only for those who live within walking distance. Any guesses which ends of the economic spectrum are most/least likely to live near city green space?.
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“Why don’t more people ride bikes in winter?”
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“Always make eye contact with drivers while walking”
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For some reason this reminds me of the guy at a public meeting who says his business will fail without cheap parking right in front
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Mayoral candidate Jen Keesmaat vows, within two years, to reduce speeds on all residential streets to 30km/hr, "transform" 100 most dangerous intersections and work to make school zone safer
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Hot take: driving on the sidewalk should always in every circumstance be punishable by a lost licence. This is the minority sliver of urban space given grudgingly to pedestrians. It’s not a new lane that opens up magically to motorists whenever they feel impatient.
The car on the sidewalk has 24 violations and $2,300 in fines still owed. The car in the street has 197 violations and has been fined $15k since 2016. This was preventable.
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Toronto has been basically running a ten-year real-life experiment into the effect on driver behaviour of largely abandoning traffic enforcement. And you'll never guess what happened.
Another day, another Toronto driver plowing through sidewalks and into immovable objects.
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Road-work in Harbord Village part of Toronto reveals the century-plus old brick surface that had been asphalted over. Imagine if the city kept it this way?
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Where does Toronto Life mag find these people?
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"after the bike lanes were installed, both the number of monthly customers served and monthly spending increased. We also learned that only 7% of our customers were using cars to shop along Bloor Street".
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It’s been more than a week since any snow has fallen at this Bathurst/Harbord bus stop. #walkTO
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Saying a woman pushed onto the subway tracks "knew or ought to have known that it was unsafe" to travel alone on the TTC is a weird flex for an agency trying to rebuild pandemic-depleted ridership.
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These are open year round, I’m told. But I guess Banff doesn’t get the kind of winter Toronto experiences
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Inbox: Toronto mayor announces commitment to increasing library funding so that all branches can be open seven days a week . This will cost a relatively paltry $8M annually and would be in effect by 2026, *twenty years* after the library board approved its “Open Hours Vision”.
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Well that’s kind of cute. When did Toronto add EV micro-pickups to its fleet?
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It's weird. Critics keep railing against bike infrastructure, cause apparently it's winter in southern Ontario six months of the year, and then we build transit shelters that leave people completely exposed to cold and wind. 🤨. pic via Transportation Minister @PrabSarkaria
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KABOOM. Inbox: to Mississauga acting mayor, from the federal housing minister. “given the defeat of [the four-plex] motion and the arguments made during its deliberation … I am not in a position to approve Mississauga’s [$120M Housing Accelerator] application”.
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Not fun fact: After rain like that Toronto harbour is full of human feces.
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Idea: below a certain temperature transit becomes free.
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Toronto police escorting anti-mask/lockdown march on Dupont. Interesting which scofflaws get fined in this city
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Another weekend of Torontonians cowering in fear at the dystopian hellscape their city has become
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Lot of Toronto-area people really do drive like assholes.
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"these patios make the city a better place . We should be begging shopkeepers to install them. Instead we’ve made it difficult". The death of open streets, the interminable debate over drinks in parks . Toronto doesn't want people having fun in public.
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It’s hard to imagine a much better metaphor for Canada’s approach to public space than commissioning an art piece of a pile of unusable chairs
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A modest proposal: signs erected temporarily for the benefit of drivers, alerting them about changes in their situation, should go in their space. Put them on the road.
Last few days, traffic signs that block sidewalk. Peds bang their heads on em. 1st one on Yonge - I bet there are more peds than cars, yet they block peds. 2nd is Dupont - instead of putting it in parking lane they block sidewalk. Poke an eye out. This is the TO transpo culture.
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Toronto can’t afford to empty park garbage cans often enough or manage to keep park toilets open and water fountains working. But they’ll put up a giant sign about their tentative semi-legalization of a behaviour normal in cities around the world. #cringeTO.
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It will never not be weird that Toronto has a subway to Pioneer Village but not to Liberty Village.
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Daily case counts are being artificially reduced in Ontario. So stop doing breaking news alerts about case counts. The daily number doesn’t mean much anymore. And particularly stop doing alerts trumpeting that the count is down.
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Remember when Toronto Police decided that traffic enforcement just wasn’t worth the staff time?.
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