Toronto/CMEDIA: After more than five years of use and millions of dollars in fines, speed enforcement cameras reportedly across the province of Ontario have officially been banned.
After Premier Doug Ford called them a “cash grab.” the cameras are no longer permitted to issue tickets as of today and passed legislation banning them province-wide despite strong opposition from city mayors and experts.
The province said that it would instead invest $210 million to support increased road safety in school and community zones.
The measures would include, said the province, traffic-calming infrastructure like speed bumps, raised crosswalks and roundabouts, as well as high visibility signage and increased police enforcement in school zones and community safety zones where municipal speed cameras were previously located.
Aligning with results from a new province-wide poll by Abacus Data released on Thursday, the new initiatives found half of Ontarians (50 percent) prefer traffic calming measures such as speed bumps, raised crosswalks, signage, roundabouts and increased police enforcement over automated speed cameras.
One in three (33 percent) expressed a preference, the poll found for automated cameras, while 17 percent said they are unsure.
Having criticized the province’s move to ban the cameras, City mayors and experts say it’s a setback for road safety in the province.
“What we know is that speed cameras really make the roads safer. The stats show that speeding is reduced, that collisions are reduced, even fatalities are reduced. So, this is an important part of the overall package to make our roads safer,” Matti Siemiatycki, the director of University of Toronto’s Infrastructure Institute was reported to say.
He believes speed cameras should remain part of a broader traffic safety strategy, one that also includes transparency, signage, and accountability for how fine revenue is used. He added that implementing traffic calming measures would be ideal because many roads are designed to feel like mini highways.
Automated speed enforcement cameras reduced the number of speeding vehicles by 45 percent in urban school zones, Research by The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto found.
“Speed is the single most important factor in pedestrian injury risk,” Dr. Andrew Howard, head of orthopaedic surgery and senior scientist in the Child Health Evaluative Sciences program at SickKids, said. “This study shows that automated speed enforcement cameras can be an effective way to reduce that risk, especially in areas where children are most vulnerable.”
While the City of Toronto defended the program, stressing that its purpose is not revenue but safety, Toronto’s Mayor Olivia Chow said in a social media post on Friday that the cameras “helped pay for over 900 crossing guards and 18 police officers.”
“Frontline workers who make roads safer, paid for by speeders. The province should cover the cost to keep these workers on our streets,” she said.
A spokesperson for the City of Toronto said today that its cameras are set to be removed starting Friday.
In acordance with provincial legislation, any tickets issued prior to Friday will still be valid and must be paid or disputed, the spokesperson stated.
The spokesperson said that signs marking school zones will be installed where permanent cameras used to be.
