A new report from Toronto city staff has landed at city council with troubling findings about road safety. According to CBC News, the data details a sharp rise in speeding since the province forced the city to take down its automated speed cameras in November, and the numbers are not sitting well with the mayor. Staff framed the report as an early look at what has changed on the city's streets since the enforcement program was switched off.
The central finding is a steep jump in how many drivers are breaking the limit. The report says speeding has quadrupled, climbing from 2 percent to 8 percent since the cameras came down, a change that officials and residents describe as people driving as though residential streets were highways. One resident captured the frustration bluntly, pointing out that some of the affected roads run through school zones.
The review was broad rather than limited to a single street. Staff looked at more than 100 areas across the city where speed cameras had been taken down, including the intersection of Parliament and Gerrard. By comparing conditions before and after the removals, the report aims to build a picture of how driver behaviour shifted once the automated enforcement disappeared from those locations.
The most serious findings involve deaths in the months that followed. Since the cameras were removed, the report says a pedestrian was killed at one of the locations and a motorcyclist was killed in another area that used to have a speed camera. Staff are now working to determine whether there is a direct correlation between taking the cameras away and people being killed by cars on those roads.
The findings feed directly into a political fight between the city and the province. The Ford government had called the cameras a cash grab as its reason for getting rid of them, a characterization critics reject. One critic warned that people are going to get hurt, arguing the cameras were removed so the premier could have, in their words, a positive news day rather than because the change made roads safer.
The province, for its part, defended its approach when pressed on the new data. The transportation minister was asked about the report while holding a press conference about increasing the speed limit on several highways, and he said he had given the city money to install other road safety measures. He pointed to options such as speed bumps, arguing that physical measures can stop drivers from speeding where the cameras once stood.