Parkside Dr. speed camera vandalized for fifth time in past 6 months
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The Parkside Dr. speed camera, Toronto’s busiest and most vandalized traffic enforcement tool, was cut down for a fifth time in the past six months.
Advocacy group Safe Parkside revealed the latest malicious act on Friday.
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“The lack of meaningful safety measures remains a big concern on Parkside Drive, a street that borders the city’s busiest park, High Park, on the west side and is lined with residential family homes on the east side,” Faraz Gholizadeh, Safe Parkside Co-Chair, said in statement.
“Despite Parkside Drive’s long and deadly history of speeding, the City of Toronto continues to overlook safety on Parkside Drive year after year.”
In response, a city spokesperson said it “condemns any incident of theft or vandalism of Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE) devices. Tampering with, damaging or stealing one of these devices allows dangerous speeding to continue and undermines the safety of all road users.”
The spokesperson added the city is “working with the contractor on other measures to help reduce incidents of vandalism. In addition to being pole-mounted, the Parkside Drive camera is remotely monitored so the contractor is notified in real time if the device goes offline unexpectedly.”
The city says all cameras have an audible alarm on the device and are coated with a substance that allows the vendor to easily remove graffiti/spray paint.
The spokesperson said cameras will always be repaired or replaced to keep them in operation and while the city does not own any of the ASE devices as they are a vendor-provided service, it is the vendor’s responsibility to replace or fix the devices within a maximum of 30 days and report serious incidents of vandalism to Toronto Police.
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The Parkside Dr. camera was installed after a speeding motorist killed an elderly couple in a horrific five-car crash in October 2021.
Safe Parkside says since its installation, the Parkside Dr. camera has become Toronto’s busiest enforcement tool, having issued a whopping 67,786 speeding tickets and generated more than $7.2 million in fines to date.
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