OttawaOttawa police will launch new ‘district-related traffic units’ next week, but Chief Eric Stubbs warned city councillors they can’t entirely replace the automated speed enforcement cameras that were turned off last month.’There’s more on us,’ police chief tells councillors worried about uptick in speeding after cameras turned offListen to this articleEstimated 3 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.Ottawa police to target speeding, street racing with new traffic units Chief Eric Stubbs says he’s heard from the community that residents want more traffic enforcement in the city.Ottawa police are launching new traffic units next week to tackle speeding and other road safety issues in specific parts of the city.Chief Eric Stubbs was at city hall Wednesday to take questions from councillors about the 2026 budget for the Ottawa Police Service. He said police need to have a presence in areas that no longer have automated speed enforcement cameras, following the provincial decision forcing municipalities to remove them. Ottawa’s speed cameras go darkStubbs noted that many of the lost cameras were in school zones and other vulnerable areas. He called the cameras an important tool that police won’t be able to rely on going forward.”There’s more on us now,” he said. Stubbs said speeding is bound to pick up in those zones now that the cameras have been turned off, but he warned that police can’t possibly pick up all of the slack.”There’s no doubt that we can’t replace the speed cameras with our resources,” he said.Stubbs said the police service will now launch new “district-related traffic units” on Monday, with a sergeant and four constables initially assigned to each district. That will later grow to seven constables.Police are moving to a model that splits the city into four districts: east, west, south and central.Stubbs later said that the new units are not a direct response to the provincial speed camera decision. He said they were in the works beforehand, and respond to long-standing concerns among councillors about road safety.Speeding up, councillor saysRiver ward Coun. Riley Brockington said he’s noticed a sharp increase in speeding along Bronson Avenue, where automated speed enforcement cameras kept watch over the stretch near Carleton University. “The average speed is about 20 kilometres higher now today,” he said. “People were adhering to the 60 [km/h limit] posted when the camera was there. It is easily now 80 passing by the university and the park.”Brockington agreed with Stubbs that police alone can’t fill the gap.”There is a heightened expectation that with the loss of speed enforcement cameras that you are going to be able to be on every street corner at every location where the cameras existed, and that’s an expectation that just won’t be met,” he said.Several councillors have raised speeding, street racing and stunt driving as key concerns in their wards. Stubbs said police have no tolerance for that kind of behaviour and are focusing on enforcement. But he said there are limits.”There is some displacement going on,” he said. “We focus on the Strandherd-Woodroffe area. They show up in Kanata. They show up on Merivale. They show up on Riverside Drive, so it is a bit of a chasing exercise.”ABOUT THE AUTHORArthur White-Crummey is a reporter at CBC Ottawa. He has previously worked as a reporter in Saskatchewan covering the courts, city hall and the provincial legislature. You can reach him at arthur.white-crummey@cbc.ca.
Ottawa police to launch new traffic units, but warn they can’t replace speed cameras
