PanAm Games traffic: you knew someone would try this

Rush hour traffic in any big city in North America is always frustrating.

Canada’s biggest urban area, the greater Toronto area, or GTA, meaning the city and surrounding suburb cities, has grown so large it’s now called the greater Toronto-Hamilton area GTHA

Even at the best of times, traffic is heavy and long traffic jams are frequent in many areas.

With the PanAm games now  starting, officials have designated to outer lanes on major highways in the GTHA as HOV  (high occupancy vehicle) and PanAm lanes only.  This means that only PanAM designated vehicles (transporting athletes or officials, or on other PanAm business) or commuter’s vehicles with 3 or more passengers can use the lane. This forces even more vehicles into the remaining lanes causing further headaches.

In a ploy used elsewhere, a man has been charged in Toronto with driving in the HOV lanes accompanied by fake passengers.

The vehicle had what appeared to be three people in it which qualifies for the HOV lane, but unfortunately he passed a police officer who noticed something odd.

The man was pulled over and found to have two nicely dressed mannequins in the car, one in the front passenger seat and another in the rear.

The man was ticketed $85 for misusing the HOV lane.

The officer noted that the fact one of the dummies was wearing a (long defunct) Montreal Expos baseball team hat, was a tip. It is Toronto after all.

The officer reported that on a good note, the dummies were wearing seatbelts, adding the police have seen this kind of thing before in Toronto’s HOV lanes which usually only require 2 or more people in a vehicle, but it’s the first time they’ve caught someone in the new PanAm situation.

The driver is not alone in wanting to use the HOV lanes to whiz past stalled traffic.

Former Toronto mayor, the often controversial Rob Ford raised new ire in some when he admitted yesterday he sometimes sneaks into the HOV lanes.

“You’ve got to watch the cops over your shoulder, just a little bob and weave. … I have to get to where I have to go. They’re a pain in the rear end, those HOV lanes.”

Nizar Omrani, the owner of a mannequin store , confirmed his sales of mannequins are up since the HOV lanes were introduced.

Quoted in the Globe and Mail newspaper he said,

“We had some cheap ones, and [those] are gone. The ones right now, you’re looking at $350”, he said adding that some buyers have told him outright they’re buying them specifically to use the HOV lanes.