It's been a history of ups and downs for Toronto's most notorious speed camera

Whether you love or hate Toronto's automated speed enforcement (ASE) cameras, the City continues to lean into the road safety strategy, adding another 75 of the machines to various Community Safety Zones just this month, bringing the total to 150.

The tech has proven to be both extremely effective and lucrative since it was launched as a pilot in 2019, bringing in millions in revenue and resulting in tens of thousands of tickets.

This success has been led by one camera in particular along Parkside Drive, the High Park-adjacent thoroughfare that has become notorious for accidents — and, now, its ongoing ASE drama.

In its first 1.5 years of operation alone, the Parkside machine nabbed more than 34,000 speeding drivers, amounting to a phenomenal $3.6 million-plus in fines, a figure that has since surpassed $7 million. But, this has led to it being targeted by vandals, something that has become a persistent issue with the tech across the city and the province.

This week marked the fourth time in the past five months that the device has been not just spray-painted, tipped over, or otherwise defaced, as others have, but completely sawed down.

At least this time around, it was not also thrown in a pond, as it was in January, which itself marked the third time that rogue locals had felled the piece of machinery. In November, it was toppled twice over the course of a single day after it was first attacked last May, blinded with red paint. 

Safe Parkside, an advocacy group founded in 2021 in the wake of a fatal collision along the roadway, has spoken out about the repeated removal of the camera from service, emphasizing again on Saturday that "a speed camera that has recently spent more time on its side or in a pond than it has upright and functioning has clearly fallen well short of its intended purpose."

The organization continues to call for "an urgent redesign" of the street, which it argues is the only true and permanent solution to the north-south artery's "dangerous conditions" that include speeding of up to four times the posted 40km/h limit (one of the recent tickets issued).

For what it's worth, council has endorsed a plan to revamp the street with wider sidewalks, bike lanes, intersection safety improvements that include dedicated turning lanes, and updated bus stops, with work planned for sometime between this year and 2027. 

In the meantime, the City reassures residents that ASE is just one useful tool in its broader toolkit to reduce road fatalities — that is, when the cameras are actually up and functioning. In this case, the vendor will have to yet again replace the camera within 30 days as Toronto Police investigate the incident.