Food trucks rally outside City Hall to ease restrictions

A line of food trucks lined up across Nathan Phillips Square on Wednesday to urge the city to let the mobile vendors operate with fewer restrictions while, insideCity Hall, councildebated a bylaw proposal tolet them operate in cityparking spots for up to five hours.

Many food truckoperators have complained about the current rules, which limitthemto 10minutes in licensed lots, and which limit the number of vendors which can operateon the same street.

Those rules would be removed if the motions before city councilare passed.

But one point of contention remaining before council is the recommendation that food trucks be at least 50 metres from open restaurants, which leaves few spots in the downtown core.

Mayor Rob Ford briefly attended the rally, and voiced his support for food trucks and the scrapping of the 50-metre rule.

"You take your family out to a restaurant, you're going to go to a restaurant," said Ford. "You're not going to stop and get a hot dog."

Other mayoral candidates at the rally included Olivia Chow, John Tory and Sarah Thomson.