After more than 32,000 speeding tickets were handed out in just three weeks by new automated speed enforcement cameras in community safety zones, council in the City of Vaughan decided to pause the program

Mayor Steven Del Duca put forward the motion last week to pause the tickets until September, when council is due to receive a report from staff on ways the city can create more effective signage about the presence of cameras.

He said he had heard from a number of constituents, including a senior who had stopped going to bingo due to the tickets they were receiving.

“I have a motion … just for us to take a brief pause and go back to the drawing board and make sure that when we come back if council supports this, none of our residents can come to us and say this is not what it is supposed to be and that we are ironclad on this one,” the mayor told council.

While almost all of the councillors were in support of the pause, few seemed to want the cameras to disappear from the landscape permanently.

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“For every complaint I get about the camera, I get a resident calling me and asking, ‘Why aren’t you putting one on my street?’” said Coun. Marilyn Iafrate. “So you know it’s here, we’re taking a pause, but they better be here to stay because otherwise, it defeats the purpose of what we’re looking for, which is a safe community.”

Over the summer months, when the cameras snap a pic of a speeder they will receive a warning in the mail rather than a fine. The city says it hopes the strategy will reduce driving speeds through awareness rather than punitive measures.

A report prepared by staff said that 12,733 speeders were caught in week one, while 11,769 tickets were issued during the second week. That number fell to 7,504 during the third week. The staff report said that two of the cameras were damaged during the three weeks. It is unclear how long the cameras were out of commission, but that may have contributed to the decline.

An automatic speed enforcement camera located on New Westminster Drive accounted for close to a third (9,877 penalty orders) of all the tickets issued, while other locations such as Kipling Avenue (6,004 penalty orders) and Ansley Grove Road (5,116 penalty orders) were also hotspots for speeders.

One of the cameras clocked at least one driver doing 145 km/h in a 40 km/h on Peter Rupert Avenue, while others clocked into the high 90s on other roads as well.

The report did not say how much money was collected as a result of the infractions.

That said, it appears that the presence of the cameras was having an impact as speed rates fell by around 10 km/h at the locations of the cameras.

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