Most notorious speed camera in Toronto chopped down for 5th time
Toronto's most notorious speed camera in the city's west end, near High Park, has been vandalized and chopped down once again.
The ASE (automated speed enforcement) camera on Parkside Drive, near Algonquin Avenue, was taken down sometime between Thursday and Friday.
It marks the fifth time in six months that the speed camera has been vandalized. In one of those, the speed camera was cut down and tossed into a semi-frozen duck pond nearby in late December 2024.
A post on Friday morning in a Facebook group called Safe Parkside showed the speed camera lying on the grass, detached from the post that once held it.
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A speed camera on Toronto's Parkside drive is cut down for the fifth time in six months. Safe Parkside / Facebook
According to Safe Parkside, this is the city's highest-grossing speed camera, with around $7 million in fines and tens of thousands of tickets issued from it.
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Faraz Ghloizadeh, the co-chair of Safe Parkside, has been advocating for safety on Parkside Drive for the last decade, and he told Global News on Friday there's 'lots of frustration' around the situation.
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'It's not just with the vandals (who) keep cutting the camera down, it's also with the City of Toronto for not addressing the speeding and dangerous conditions of Parkside beyond a camera,' Ghloizadeh said.
Ghloizadeh said he wants to see more done, suggesting physical infrastructure changes be put in on the street level in order to slow them down.
'Unfortunately, you're still seeing extreme signs of speeding on Parkside,' he said.
Parkside Drive is about a two-kilometre stretch from Bloor Street in the north to Lake Shore Boulevard West in the south. Ghloizadeh said he often sees cars speeding for most of that stretch up until the end where the camera is located and then the motorists slow down.
'This isn't really achieving the safety the community is looking for,' Ghloizadeh said.
2:04
Suspended driver who killed two on Parkside Drive sentenced to six and a half years in prison
The speed-detecting camera was initially installed after the death of two seniors — 71-year-old Valdemar Avila and his wife, 69-year-old Fatima Avila — on Oct. 12, 2021.
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The couple was stopped at a red light on Parkside Drive when police said the driver of a BMW rear-ended the Toyota Matrix they were sitting in. That initial collision caused a chain-reaction collision with three other vehicles.
A collision reconstructionist had testified during the court process that the driver was going well over 100 km/h. The driver was convicted and sentenced to 6.5 years in prison.
City crews were on scene Friday, picking up the camera and taking it away.
There is no word on if or when a replacement will be put in. Global News has reached out to the City of Toronto, but did not hear back in time for publication.
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