Ontario, Canada's most densely populated province, is struggling with speeding. It has been nine months since Premier Doug Ford cast speed cameras as a municipal "cash grab" and banned them outright. After the cameras disappeared, speeding quadrupled, and on some major roads speeding became routine, with eight out of 10 vehicles exceeding the limit.
On the 4th (local time), Bloomberg and the Toronto Star reported that the share of vehicles exceeding the speed limit on Katimavik Road in Ottawa, the Canadian capital and the second-largest city in Ontario, jumped from 14% last fall to 80% in May. Katimavik Road is a low-speed zone near a school. When the speed cameras were running, one out of seven vehicles was recorded speeding, but once the cameras were removed, the cars obeying the limit became the minority.
The same shift appeared in other cities. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow in June released data showing the share of vehicles traveling at least 11 kph over the limit rose from 2% to more than 8%, and said it was "horrible." In Guelph, a satellite city of 150,000 people west of Toronto, within six months of the cameras' removal, the share of vehicles exceeding the limit by 11–15 kph jumped from 3.9% to 12%, and those exceeding by more than 15 kph surged from 2.2% to 7.2%. Bloomberg said speeding increased sharply in every municipality that released data, without exception.
The inconvenience has fallen squarely on residents. Guelph's road safety Director said complaints are pouring in from residents that "drivers are using the streets like a racetrack." In Toronto, at least two people recently died in traffic crashes near sites where cameras were removed. Still, experts noted that it has been only about six months since the cameras were taken down and said it is too early to judge how much the rise in speeding has increased crashes and deaths.
The speed cameras previously installed by the city of Ontario operated on the same principle as the unmanned enforcement devices on Korean roads. They measure passing vehicles' speeds and, for those over the threshold, photograph the license plate and mail a fine notice. First introduced in 1987 in Arizona, more than 370 municipalities in the United States now use the system. In Europe, the practice is so common that Italy alone has more than 10,000 speed cameras.
Ontario first set up cameras on a highway on the outskirts of Toronto in 1994. In 2017, it revised provincial law to allow municipalities to install them directly throughout city streets. As each city adopted the measure, cameras spread to school zones and roads with frequent crashes.
But when Premier Ford moved to change the program in September last year, all the speed cameras that had been in place for 32 years disappeared. At the time, he introduced a bill banning cameras across the province, citing a desire to "protect taxpayers and drivers and prevent them from being gouged." Canada's Global News pointed out that vehicles carrying Premier Ford and his ministers were caught by speed cameras 23 times over the past three years.
Twenty municipal leaders opposed the bill, but it passed the provincial legislature in October last year. The Progressive Conservative Party led by Premier Ford holds 80 of the 124 seats in the legislature, allowing it to pass desired bills easily. As a result, cities across Ontario stopped issuing all speed-camera fines within two weeks of the bill's passage. At the same time, Ford rolled out voter-friendly policies such as deferring Ontario's gasoline tax and eliminating tolls on major highways.
After the removal of speed cameras led to more crashes and mounting public criticism, the State Governments ordered municipalities to use budgets to install speed bumps and raised crosswalks. A raised crosswalk is a traffic safety facility built about 10 centimeters higher than a standard crosswalk.
However, experts noted it is practically difficult to install bumps on wide arterial roads where much of the speeding occurs, because of traffic by large vehicles such as buses and emergency vehicles such as ambulances and fire trucks. Guelph said, "We have a backlog of 300 requests for traffic-calming facilities, but due to staffing and budget limits we can handle only about five a year."
Matti Siemiatycki, a professor of geography and urban planning at the University of Toronto, told Bloomberg, "Premier Ford built his political career representing suburban, not urban, voters," adding, "From the start he pursued driver-pleasing policies, and the current spike in speeding was entirely predictable."