Toronto’s automated cameras caught 456 speeding city vehicles within an 18-month period.
There were also 129 city vehicles that ran red lights.
The data, which was presented in a report to the infrastructure and environment committee earlier this month, comes months after a CTV News Toronto investigation found that hundreds of tickets had been issued to operators of city-vehicles within the first year of the automated speed enforcement program.
According to documents obtained in freedom of information requests, 326 tickets were issued in that first year.
At least 20 involved garbage trucks, including one vehicle caught speeding outside of a North York school as students were leaving for the day.
The documents showed more than two dozen specialty vehicles were also fined, including dump trucks, vehicles with heavy equipment and ones carrying fluid in bulk. At least two bylaw enforcement vehicles were caught speeding.
The latest report by the city shows how many tickets were issued to employees between July 2020 and December 2021.
The largest offender is the Toronto Community Housing Corporation. Data shows that 90 tickets were issued to vehicles used by this department, representing about 20 per cent of all infractions.
There were 75 vehicles in Parks, Forestry and Recreation and 69 solid waste management vehicles that were caught speeding on automated cameras.
In terms of running red lights, vehicles with Transportation Services received the highest number of infractions with 29 tickets, followed closely by vehicles in Solid Waste Management and Toronto Water.
“I think the city of Toronto should have a very high standard with vision zero because it’s our policy and we need to lead by example,” Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong said.
Tickets issued by automated speed tickets are issued to the owner of the vehicle rather than the driver, so the city ends up fronting the payments.
Speaking with CTV News Toronto in July 2021, the city said its drivers were issued $85,037 worth of tickets over the last two years.
Officials could confidently say it recovered $14,384.50 of that money, but at the time about $70,652.50 was outstanding. This is partly due to the challenges involved in figuring out who is driving the vehicle at the time of the infraction and difficulties in tracking tickets during the pandemic.
The roughly 450 tickets issued in the last 18 months is a significant decrease from previous years, which councillors say proves the automatic speeding cameras are working.
As a result, the city says it will be introducing new vehicle monitoring technology that will provide them with instant data about who is driving and how fast they are going.
