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A Maclean’s survey of selected cities found errant drivers are an increasingly lucrative source of funds. In Calgary, the number of speeding and other traffic violations jumped 31 per cent between 2005 and 2010. That dumped more than $39 million into city coffers, in addition to a provincial share of almost 17 per cent per cent of ticket revenue and a 15 per cent share for a victims of crime program. In Toronto last year, city police issued 700,721 traffic tickets, a 48 per cent increase from five years earlier. That amounts to some $60 million in fine revenue flowing through Toronto’s court service, of which the city gets the lion’s share. Yes, perhaps, every traffic stop makes the streets a little safer. Still, one wonders if the 94 per cent increase in stop sign violations means Toronto attitudes toward this most basic of traffic signs have degenerated these past five years, or if police have a greater incentive to enforce.
In Montreal, with the largest per capita police presence among major cities, that isn’t even open to question. The force admitted earlier this year that some officers have what it described as ticket “objectives” rather than the more loaded term “quotas.” Perhaps as a result, moving violations (bad lane changes and such) jumped by 93 per cent over the past five years, and speeding ticket revenue, in a city long noted for its spirited drivers, soared by 140 per cent. The tickets are issued in the name of safety, driven by nationwide concerns over traffic deaths and drunk driving, rather than by revenue needs, says Stamatakis, the police association head. “If there was any overt attempt to try and use the members that I represent to generate more revenue in that kind of obvious manner, there’d be a bit of a backlash.”
By that standard, Canadian roads must be safe indeed. All of Canada’s major cities are well represented on the National Speed Trap Exchange, a website of the Washington-based National Motorists Association. The site allows drivers to post and share the favoured hunting spots for traffic police in cities and towns across North America. While hardly a scientific measure, Edmonton and Montreal drivers have listed 13 Internet pages of declared speed traps, Calgary lists 26 pages. Toronto lists a whooping 64, just two short of the 66 pages for Chicago and Los Angeles combined. Gary Biller, executive director of the motorists’ association, says drivers the past two years have noted a jump in ticket enforcement, “coincident with the economic downturn.” Police seem to be ticketing at a lower speed threshold, he says, “where, in the past, such minor violations would have resulted in a warning, if a traffic stop was made at all.”
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