Notorious speed camera on Parkside Drive vandalized for a 4th time
Posted April 19, 2025 11:50 am.
Last Updated April 20, 2025 10:46 am.
Toronto’s most notorious speed camera has been vandalized for a fourth time in the last five months.
According to the neighbourhood group Safe Parkside, the camera located south of Algonquin Avenue was cut down overnight, “leaving this dangerous stretch of road with little in the form of safety.”
The last time the camera was vandalized was back in December when it was cut down and disposed of in a pond in High Park. Prior to that, the camera was cut down twice in 25 hours last November.
According to City of Toronto data, the camera is among the highest-grossing, generating more than $7 million in fines to date.
“This camera is not doing the job, its spent more time on its side than upright in the past few months, so If that’s not a sign that much more needs to be done, if that’s not a sign that a speed camera is not gonna fix the problem on Parkside than I don’t know what is,” Faraz Gholizadeh, the co-chair of Safe Parkside tells CityNews.
Gholizadeh says the city continues to fail in addressing the dangerous conditions that persist on Parkside Drive.
“It’s prioritizing pedestrians, prioritizing all road users not just motorists, not designing streets like urban highways running through residential neighbourhoods, that’s unacceptable,” he said.
The Parkside Drive speed camera was installed following the death of two seniors who were killed in a multiple-vehicle crash at the intersection of Parkside Drive and Spring Road on Oct. 12 of 2021.
Last October, city council endorsed a road safety plan for the area that would see the installation bi-directional cycling lanes on the west side of Parkside Drive, reducing the number of motor vehicle lanes to one southbound and one northbound lane.
“It’s been over three years they’ve been studying Parkside; I don’t know why they need so many years to study a street that’s only 2 km long,” said Gholizadeh.
According to the city, it does not own any of the automated speed cameras and it’s the vendor’s responsibility to replace or fix the devices and to report serious incidents of vandalism to Toronto police.
