By Canadian Press

Another NHL team says Toronto gridlock forced them to walk to rink

Feb 23, 2025 | 3:44 PM

TORONTO — Toronto’s traffic gridlock appears to have once again forced another National Hockey League team to walk to the rink.

The Carolina Hurricanes, who were in the city to play the Maple Leafs on Saturday, posted a video to social media that shows a row of people from behind walking along a snow-lined path in downtown Toronto.

The caption states, “When a Toronto traffic jam means a pre-game walk to the rink.”

The Canadian Press has emailed media representatives with the Hurricanes asking for further details.

It’s happened before — Utah’s NHL team was forced to walk to their game against the Maple Leafs after their bus got stuck in Toronto traffic on a Sunday night in late November, which at the time Mayor Olivia Chow blamed on the Santa Claus Parade.

And in June, former One Direction band member Niall Horan had to walk through bumper-to-bumper traffic to get to his concert at Scotiabank Arena.

A spokesman for Chow has not yet responded to a request for comment.

The Leafs beat the Hurricanes 6-3 in Saturday’s contest.

Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford, who is now running for re-election, called the city’s gridlock “embarrassing” following last year’s incident with Utah’s NHL team.

Ford also said people are “avoiding downtown” due to the traffic, and he pointed to bike lanes as part of the problem.

Toronto’s traffic was also an issue last week when the Toronto Region Board of Trade released its congestion action plan for the city. It said arterial routes are “beset with construction that occupies entire lanes for months or years,” and that the problem was made worse with bike lanes, on-street parking, curb-lane cafés and taxi and ride-hailing pickups.

“It’s now almost routine for visiting sports and entertainment celebrities to post social media clips of themselves abandoning trapped vehicles as they race to their destinations,” said a letter included at the start of the action plan from the board’s CEO Giles Gherson.

“Goods sit idle when they should be on store shelves. Residents opt to stay home all together — avoiding family get-togethers, new job opportunities, and job upskilling. Our economy, business and overall quality of life are being severely damaged,” Gherson added.

Chow, in response to the plan, said in a statement on Thursday that the city has been addressing many of the issues raised in the report.

She said the city has brought on dedicated staff to make construction projects work together to keep roads open and has hiked road occupancy fees to better reflect the costs of such road closures.

Chow said the city is also freezing transit fares for the second year in a row, and will have 100 traffic enforcement agents working by the end of 2025.

“Congestion is an issue that impacts all of us. Whether you are stuck in a car or stuck on transit (the) result is the same, missed appointments, being late for work or lost time with family and friends,” Chow said in the statement.

Ontario passed a divisive bike lane bill in November that will require municipalities to get the province’s approval to install bike lanes when they would remove a lane for vehicles. The bill also removes sections of bike lanes in Toronto and restores them as lanes for vehicle traffic.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 23, 2025.

The Canadian Press