Nimble drivers exploit disabled parking
STEVE RUSSELL/TORONTO STAR
The driver of a Cadillac Escalade returns to her SUV with a package after rushing into a Yorkville shop on Cumberland Street, a disabled parking permit on the dash.
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Voices: Disabled permits
Permit requirements
Drivers flout permit rules
Minister reviews permits
More permits than people
Permit abuses condemned
Speak Out
We asked: Do you think applicants should have to be vetted by a government-approved physician to verify their need for a permit? Responses
Star investigation shows 500,000 permits active across Ontario
Jan 27, 2007 04:30 AM
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David Bruser
Staff Reporter
Martha Teodosiu, a midtown travel agent, parks her Jaguar sedan in a no-parking zone in Yorkville, gets out and struts atop three-inch heels to a salon appointment.
A disabled parking permit, featuring the blue-and-white decal depicting a person in a wheelchair, sits on her dashboard.
Upon her return about an hour later, after gracefully, and without apparent strain, sitting down in the driver's seat, Teodosiu explains that her disability was of the temporary variety.
"It's because of a leg injury. Snowboarding. Fracture," she says of her year-old and clearly healed injury. I've had (the permit) about a year."
And it's valid for another two, according to provincial transportation records that show the five-year permit was actually issued three years ago to a person with a serious heart condition.
In Yorkville, where street parking is always scarce, it is clear that disabled permits have for many become a licence to park for free. The permit allows parking in no-parking and metered zones for varying times, depending on the location.
Down the street, Oriella Stillo, who owns Accessity, a women's fashion store, is disgusted.
"That's one less space for somebody that actually needs it," she says. "It just pisses me off. The law has become a joke. When the law becomes a joke, everybody ceases to obey it."
There are about 500,000 temporary and permanent disabled parking permits currently in circulation in Ontario, a number that seems high even to Ontario's Minister of Transportation, Donna Cansfield.
To qualify, an applicant must need assistance walking from another person or cane or other device, suffer from lung or heart disease, need portable oxygen, be severely limited in their ability to walk because of an arthritic, neurological, musculoskeletal or orthopedic condition, or be legally blind. There's also a general category for conditions that "severely limit" mobility.
But the Star found permit holders who either did not meet the criteria, were issued permits under a loose interpretation of the rules, or were using someone else's permit.
"Shameful, isn't it?" says Cansfield, when told what the Star found. "We need to revisit and revise this program because it obviously has some holes in it."
The transportation ministry does little to ensure that only those who need permits get them, relying instead on a long list of health professionals, including doctors, nurse practitioners, chiropractors and occupational therapists to properly authorize permit requests.
In travel agent Teodosiu's case, it's unclear to whom the permit belongs. In an interview, Teodosiu gave several reasons; she got it because she has a broken leg, she has a heart condition, the permit helps her mother.
Back on Cumberland St. in Yorkville, a woman declines a helping hand, then hefts several suitcases from a trolley into the back of her Honda SU
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5:11 PM on October 11, 2008
