Just three days after the City of Toronto voted to move ahead with a $7.5-million Parkside Drive bike lane project, vandals cut down a speed camera in the area.
Over the weekend, Parkside's speed camera, which has issued over 61,000 tickets since its installation in April 2022, was destroyed. The vandal had completely cut through the metal pole that supports the camera, causing it to topple to the ground.
The Safe Parkside Instagram account issued a statement Monday morning, accompanied by a photo of the chopped-down speed camera, explaining the "speed camera was cut down like a tree just 3 days after Toronto City Council approved a complete street redesign of Parkside Drive."
The owner of the social media account pointed their finger at "one of the 63,633 motorists that have received a speeding ticket courtesy [of] the Parkside speed camera."
"They must have been pretty upset about having to contribute to the estimated $6.8 million that this speed camera has generated. I guess some people feel they should be able to speed through communities with impunity."
Parkside Drive sits just east of High Park. It’s a major north-south thoroughfare connecting Bloor Street to Lake Shore Drive and the Gardiner Expressway.
Residents have long lobbied the city to make the street safer.
Over two-thirds of councillors voted in favour of the motion to continue studying how Parkside can be reconfigured to accommodate bike lanes, even though legislation by the Doug Ford government is attempting to block the city's effort to expand bike lanes.
In the nearly 1,500 collisions on the street over the last decade, three people have been killed and five seriously injured. Parkside is also the speeding capital of Toronto.
