Toronto axes traffic camera pilot to fight gridlock after Ford government's speed camera ban

Toronto has cancelled an automated traffic enforcement pilot intended to help fight congestion in the wake of the provincial government’s ban on speed cameras in Ontario, CBC Toronto has learned.

Cameras for the pilot project were supposed to be installed this past summer to gather data on drivers “blocking the box” at intersections, driving in dedicated bus lanes and obstructing bike lanes. Tickets weren’t expected to be issued until sometime next year at the earliest, in part because provincial approval is required to enforce traffic violations this way.

But the cameras were never installed and now the pilot has been axed.

“Recent provincial legislation prohibiting the use of Automated Speed Enforcement cameras indicated that other enforcement tactics would be favoured over automated enforcement tactics,” said city spokesperson Kate Lear. 

CBC Toronto dug into how this kind of automated enforcement could help address gridlock in its three-part series, Gridlocked: The Way Out earlier this year. At the time, Seattle was the only North American city issuing tickets for blocking the box and driving in a bus lane through an automated enforcement program — and it appeared to be changing driver behaviour there. 

“This is taking out of the toolbox a tool that works,” said Matti Siemiatycki, director of the Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto, of abandoning the automated enforcement pilot.

“So people will continue to experience all the same congestion that they have, all the same traffic and all the same frustration.”

The move comes after Premier Doug Ford’s government passed legislation in late October banning the use of speed cameras in Ontario. It also comes a year after the city approved a congestion management plan that included automated enforcement. 

CBC Toronto asked the province if it would ever allow the city to issue tickets through automated enforcement for such traffic violations, but did not receive a response before publication. 

In January, Toronto’s director of traffic management said the city was hoping to leverage the practices and technology Seattle had in place. 

Between the launch of Seattle’s automated enforcement program in 2022 and the end of 2024, only up to nine per cent of vehicle owners who were issued a warning for blocking the box later received a ticket for doing it again. 

“The automated enforcement is working... People get an initial ticket and then they learn, and they don't do it again,” said Siemiatycki about the Seattle program.

“To not use one of the tools that’s worked in other regions really puts us behind in an area that we need to be leading.”

The recidivism rate in Seattle was higher for driving in a bus lane, at 45 per cent.