Toronto driver parks in bus stop to grab Timmies and gets humiliated by bike cop

How much is your morning Tim Hortons fix worth to you? One Toronto driver will be paying up the wazoo for their coffee in the form of a $150 parking ticket after leaving their car at a TTC bus stop for a quick Timmies run.

And if that isn’t rough enough, the driver is now being absolutely humiliated on social media by the ticketing officer.

Parking Enforcement Officer (PEO) Erin Urquhart is perhaps Toronto’s most prolific bike cop, known for her social media posts highlighting the “do’s and don’ts” of parking in the city.

On Tuesday evening, Urquhart was on patrol when she came across a Jeep parked illegally in front of the Tim Hortons at Bloor and Bedford, and the ensuing video is just over two minutes of concentrated justice.

Urquhart explains in a TikTok, “As I was finishing up the ticket, the driver came running out of the Tim Hortons with coffee in hand, saying, ‘Oh, I’m here, I’m here,’ despite the fact they are parked in a no standing [zone] and a bus stop.”

“It’s not like you don’t do that” 🤔😑 really? After repeating myself a few times this driver still thought it was acceptable to park in no standing zone to get coffee. I hear “ oh I was just 3 minutes “ or “ I’m leaving” 100x a day. Roll the 🎲 be prepared to pay the price. pic.twitter.com/aYsfW3UkhC

— PEO Erin Urquhart (@TPS_BikeHart) March 30, 2023

The driver attempts to argue that they just ran into the Timmies, maintaining that the coffee run was quick, but it wasn’t enough to dissuade the ticketing officer.

“You’re not understanding that it doesn’t matter. You did the damage when you parked here,” says Urquhart.

The driver steps back into their car in what reads as an act of defiance, but when Urquhart proceeds to issue the ticket, the driver re-emerges from the vehicle to argue that they were “just three minutes.”

“It doesn’t matter,” says Urquhart, “and that’s how you get tickets. By parking illegally to get Tim Hortons.”

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When the driver tries to counter by claiming that the officer probably does it too (and we have definitely seen cops break traffic laws, to the driver’s credit), Urquhart snaps back, “no, I don’t because I’m on a bike.”

Urquhart pulls up Google Street View to further shame the driver, showing that while the Jeep was parked in front of St. George Station, there was a Green P lot available literally right across the street.

“There’s a Green P right there. No excuse,” says Urquhart.

“When you roll the dice, be prepared to pay the price, and unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened to this driver.”

Urquhart has provided a window into the frustrating and oftentimes bizarre world of parking enforcement in Toronto, highlighting weirdness like empty Juicy Fruit packs and expired tickets as decoys, confused truck drivers, and oh so many cases of entitled drivers treating bike infrastructure like their own exclusive parking lots.