As Toronto heads back to work in earnest after the holidays, Mayor John Tory is desperate for everyone to know about his new downtown parking enforcement blitz designed to combat gridlock. He even took a ride in a helicopter this morning to draw attention to the initiative, which could see motorists fined up to $500 for blocking a lane on a busy street (for commercial vehicles the fine could be as much as $1,000).

It's a good idea, and one that should have been put in place quite a while ago given the state of traffic in this city, but let's be a bit careful about thinking that these measures are going to dramatically speed up our commute. There will be an extra eight officers tasked with parking enforcement starting this morning. Will that allow for the blitz that's being advertised? Perhaps. What really remains to be seen is how many minutes something like this might shave off of the average person's trip to work.

Tory wants to build a reputation as the mayor who addressed Toronto's gridlock problems. That's likely better than one whose rallying cry was austerity measures, but let's make sure we keep the pressure on for urgent infrastructure upgrades and not be satisfied with initiatives that were always supposed to be in place anyway.

Photo by Jesse Morgan in the blogTO Flickr pool.