The province sent Toronto speed limit signs to replace the speed cameras it banned, but they’re too big
Now we need new poles, which the province will also generously pay for
For someone who seems to want us to forget about speed cameras, Premier Doug Ford sure is drawing out the plot.
First, he amended policy back in 2019 to enable the installation of speed cameras. And they worked! A July study from SickKids and Toronto Metropolitan University found that the cameras had reduced speeding by 45 per cent in school zones and other safety priority areas. It also found that speed cameras slow the majority of drivers’ maximum speed by more than 10 kilometres per hour.
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Then Ford changed his tune, calling them a “cash grab” because ticket payments go to municipalities. (It was also reported by Global News that vehicles registered to Ford’s cabinet ministers appeared to be getting a lot of tickets.) Earlier this month, he banned them, announcing that in their place the province would allocate $210 million to road safety initiatives, including speed bumps and signs. (Didn’t speed bumps and signs already exist? And didn’t we still need the speed cameras?)
The latest, as of yesterday, is that the new speed limit signs provided to Toronto by the province, to be put up in school zones, are massive—way too large to fit on the poles we already have—so now someone has to buy and install new poles, to be able to put up the new signs, which are replacing the speed cameras that were installed and then taken down.
“They’re too big, and we have to get new poles. The province said they would cover the cost,” Mayor Olivia Chow said at a news conference. She noted that Toronto has more than 600 school zones but was sent enough signs for just 20 of them.
Brampton city councillor Rowena Santos told CityNews that she worries the signage could cause blind spots due to their size. “I’m concerned about how huge it is,” she said.
Minister of Transportation Prabmeet Sarkaria put the onus back on Toronto, telling CityNews, “I think the municipalities can figure out how to install a sign.”
Is anyone else feeling dizzy?
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
