Toronto’s mayor is fighting to keep the city’s speed cameras in operation, with council passing a motion Wednesday it hopes will cause Premier Doug Ford to reconsider his pledge to get rid of them. 

But despite the move by city council, Ford said he remains steadfast in his promise to ban the traffic enforcement tools province-wide.

Mayor Olivia Chow’s motion includes some measures to help ensure drivers aren’t being onerously ticketed, such as limiting the number of tickets a person can get before their first ticket comes in the mail and directing staff to put bigger, more visible signs next to speed cameras so drivers can spot them more easily.

It also instructs staff to ask the provincial government to provide rationale for removing  automated speed enforcement with “supporting road safety data,” as well as for city staff to provide MPPs with information on the cameras’ importance. 

The vote comes two weeks after Ford announced plans to table legislation to ban the use of speed cameras, a traffic enforcement tool the premier has called an ineffective cash grab. 

Ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, Chow slammed Ford’s plans and said he was ignoring clear evidence that speed cameras prevent injury and death. 

“We know speed kills and we know speed cameras in school zones protect children from death or serious injuries. The evidence is clear. Speed cameras save lives,” she said. 

“The province plans to rip them out, and it rips out one of the most effective tools to keep children safe.”

Ford says cameras ‘total cash grab’ even with changes 

Asked Wednesday about the changes to Toronto’s speed camera program, Ford said he still believed ASE was a “total cash grab” and insisted they “do not work” to increase safety. 

Ford has said he believes traffic-calming measures, such as speed bumps and roundabouts, are a better way of reducing speeding, and that the province plans to provide funding to municipalities to help put those measures in place. 

WATCH | Ford announces plan to ban speed cameras in Ontario:

Ford to ban speed cameras in Ontario

Ontario Premier Doug Ford says his government will introduce legislation to ban speed cameras, instead establishing a provincial fund to help municipalities put in place other “proactive traffic-calming initiatives.”

That’s something he repeated Wednesday. 

“If you want to continue making it a cash grab and not looking at alternatives, we have an alternative to put infrastructure in,” he said at a Queen’s Park news conference. 

“But folks, they don’t want to do that. They want to continue to collect hundreds of millions of dollars and continue speeding.”

Chow also said Wednesday she’s spoken with Ford about his plans, but it did not change his mind.

Still, she said she remains hopeful the ASE program can be saved “as long as we have speed cameras that are operating.”

Cameras catching drivers speeding 100 km/h over limit 

City councillors heard some alarming figures on just how fast some people were caught driving past the speed cameras. 

Over half of the city’s camera locations has issued tickets for speeding 100 km/h over the legal limit for where they were driving, with the highest speed detected at 187 km/h in a 50 km/h zone, said Barbara Gray, the city’s general manager of transportation services. 

Gray said the city has never issued a ticket for driving a kilometre over the speed limit past an ASE camera. 

“I just want to say upfront that we see this as a pretty significant safety issue,” she told councillors. 

Gray said staff are concerned that without the cameras, Toronto could see more traffic related-fatalities and serious injuries — something the city’s Vision Zero plan has worked to reduce. 

“Our concern is without [the program], we will start to see those numbers that we’ve worked so hard to keep Torontonians safe will start to go back up again.”