While the city has yet to replace its most profitable and most vandalized speed camera, new data shows the speeds some drivers are reaching on a stretch of Parkside Drive.
A Freedom of Information request by a local advocacy group found that a top speed of 154 km/hr in the posted 40 km zone was recorded in February 2024, and that seven of the top 10 speeds were in excess of 120 km/hr.
“The top speed of 154 kilometres per hour would get you a stunt driving charge on the 401, let alone on a street by High Park,” said Faraz Gholizadeh, co-chair of Safe Parkside.
“It’s mind-boggling, but honestly, it’s not surprising. We were expecting these speeds when we put in this request, and we found out that actually the top 46 speeds are 100 kilometres and over.”
While construction and congestion are preventing anyone from going too fast on Parkside Drive these days, speed has long been a problem, and at times the results have been deadly.
In October 2021, two people were killed after a chain reaction accident at the intersection of Parkside Drive and Spring Road. The driver was travelling over 100 kilometres an hour when he slammed into stopped vehicles.
The Parkside Drive speed camera was installed in April 2022, and since then, it has become one of Toronto’s most prolific, issuing over 69,000 tickets, amounting to more than $7.3 million in fines.
The speed camera has been repeatedly targeted, first being cut down twice in November, with the second incident occurring just a day after it was reinstalled. It was again removed and thrown into a nearby duck pond in December. Then, in July, it was cut down despite a newly installed surveillance camera a short distance away.
In early September, the camera was vandalized for the seventh time in less than a year.
While it has yet to be replaced, Mayor Olivia Chow says it will return, and she insists speed cameras are slowing down drivers.
“When people break the law, they need to pay,” she said during an unrelated groundbreaking ceremony in Scarborough on Wednesday.
“We caught them, probably one or two times, because it’s gonna cost them a lot of money, and probably then they are not doing it again.”
During a recent review of automated speed enforcement, Toronto city staff revealed that the highest speed recorded by a camera in Toronto was 187 km/hr in a 50km/hr zone at Midland near Montgomery Road on Jan. 2025 at 10 p.m., and that over half of Toronto’s cameras have clocked drivers who were traveling over 100 km/hr over the speed limit this year. Most of the speed cameras are located at areas where the posted speed is 30 to 50 km/hr.
Premier Doug Ford has called the speed cameras “a cash grab” and has threatened to move forward with legislation that will ban them, despite opposition from city officials, police chiefs and safety advocates.
