What to know
- A Toronto report found it would cost about $52 million and take up to 13 years to install traffic-calming measures, such as speed humps, across all eligible school zone roads after Ontario banned automated speed enforcement cameras.
- Premier Doug Ford criticized city hall, claiming the work could be completed in months, not years.
- The province banned speed cameras last year, with Ford previously calling them a “cash grab” and promising alternative road safety measures instead.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford criticized Toronto’s city hall after a report found that it would take up to 13 years and $52 million to build other road safety measures after his government banned speed cameras.
Earlier this month, a report from the city’s General Manager, Transportation Services found that it would cost about $4,000 to install road bumps and other traffic calming measures per location in Toronto’s school zones.
With 612 km of local roads, 163 km of collector roads, and 244 km of arterial roads within school zones in Toronto, the report also concluded that, in total, the work would come to $52 million.
“Since adoption of the updated 2023 Traffic Calming Policy, the City has increased delivery of traffic calming measures each year, with approximately 700 speed humps and speed cushions installed in 2025,” the report added.
“Assuming a moderate increase in the annual delivery capacity, it would take approximately 13 years to install traffic calming measures on all eligible roadways within school zones.”
The report comes after the Ontario government passed controversial legislation banning automated speed enforcement cameras last year. Leading to the ban, Ford called the devices a “cash grab” and said the province would in turn focus on installing alternative traffic-calming measures to bump road safety and protect taxpayers.
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Ford takes aim at city hall
Speaking with reporters during an unrelated press conference on Thursday, Ford defied the report’s findings, saying that “only the radical left at city hall” would come to these results.
The premier also suggested that, if he were to take over the service, it would take “months [as] opposed to 13 years” to install the tools.
“Only the radical left at city hall, the most dysfunctional political arena in the entire country —always has been, always will be — that says it takes 13 years to build a speed bump. That’s the problem. Those people should not be reelected,” he said.
“If you left it up to them, they’d destroy everything in their path and everyone would be driving around in a horse and cart.”
Mentioning a specific speed camera on Parkside Drive, which he said issued about 70,000 tickets, Ford also criticized the city for not replacing speed cameras with speed bumps earlier on.
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“Someone with half a brain [would] think, ‘do you want to slow down traffic? Let’s put some speed bumps in there.’ That would actually probably take a week to get done if they expedited it because they know the cost of them, and put them in. It’s as simple as that,” he added.
