Find SF parking cops
109 comments
·September 23, 2025RyanOD
vhcr
This is solved with better infrastructure.
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knowitnone3
This is now illegal in some states
rahimnathwani
It's illegal in California but in San Francisco official policy is to not enforce this law.
If there's no red paint on the curb, they won't ticket you.
This is official policy:
https://www.sfmta.com/blog/making-enforcement-fair-our-new-p...
gboss
It makes sense. It was ridiculous that they were originally proposing ticketing people without there being signage that it was illegal to park there. They need to just paint the curbs.
spankalee
> $158
> 99 Grove St
> 10:43 AM • Truck
> Blocking bike lane
jakelazaroff
Wish we had officers like that in NYC :,)
jermaustin1
They're too busy parking in bike lanes.
BestHackerOnHN
[dead]
sugarpimpdorsey
> Dreams of a utopia with bike lanes everywhere and drivers ticketed left and right
> Wonders why shelves are empty when delivery drivers can't park their trucks anywhere
> Angrily gives Uber Eats driver poor review because his tuna fish sandwich was 2 minutes late because driver couldn't find parking
creaturemachine
Your lunch is not that special that it needs its own car. Luckily bikes excel at this job too.
deathanatos
SF has dedicated commercial loading zones, for large deliveries. (Or, for some of the larger buildings, they just have an underground or partially underground loading dock.) For things like Uber, yes, one would need to find a parking spot, not park in an active lane of traffic¹. If either are insufficient, people are free to lobby for more, where they are needed.
(¹and as bike lanes are not wide enough to accommodate a vehicle, you're partially blocking a car lane, too.)
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lawlessone
>Wonders why shelves are empty when delivery drivers can't park their trucks anywhere
uh don't big shops usually have truck ports?
sugarpimpdorsey
Maybe he had to use the restroom in an emergency?
I'd prefer people delivering my goods and handling my food park illegally in a bike lane and use a restroom like a civilized person rather than being forced to go in a Gatorade bottle before handing me my sandwich.
mc32
Safeway? Sure. Mom-and-Pops? Not usually. How are small restaurants going to get their ingredients delivered if delivery trucks can’t park? Ok maybe in some locations they can park a few blocks away and deliver with hand trucks —but then they risk taking much more time to deliver and going back to a broken-in truck or van.
primitivesuave
I did a fascinating analysis of SFMTA data a few years back. They posted a public list of names and license plates [1] that they refuse to take down, despite many emails from me over the years. I found a particular license plate that belonged to a plumber with an impeccable 5 star reputation on Yelp, whose business in SF was effectively ended by street sweeping fines. He accidentally paid the same ticket twice, which resulted in his work vehicle being towed for excessive delinquency on the original ticket, which culminated in him moving his plumbing business to Utah.
I mentioned his 5 star reputation because several people got on Yelp over the years and described situations where he wouldn't even charge them money if he could fix something in a few minutes. It was very sad to learn how the SFTMA ran an honest plumber out of our city, and still won't take his name down off the list below (even 8 years after the deadline to respond).
I don't mean to draw undue attention to that list - please bombard the SFTMA with emails to take it down, it is a very obvious invasion of privacy and laughably unnecessary.
1. https://www.sfmta.com/reports/escheatment-posting-october-20...
knowitnone3
I don't understand or this makes no sense. If he paid the ticket twice, shouldn't SFTMA own him money? Why was it delinquent if he paid twice? Something does not add up in this story.
Arch-TK
I'm curious, how did his name being on this list significantly affect his business?
I live in a different country and I can't imagine checking the "traffic fine registry PDF on a random government website" when considering which plumber to hire.
I don't doubt that this caused him problems, I'm just trying to understand how.
hn_throw_250915
Reading this comment I’m stumped as to what SF can learn from this. There’s a lesson in there somewhere but I have no idea what it could be.
Oh well.
ronsor
> street sweeping fines
Why the hell does SF need to sweep the streets so much?
scottbez1
Generally to keep streets safe to drive on, and pleasant to live near.
In particular, SF receives very little rainfall for most of the year, which means that leaves and debris easily accumulate rather than being washed away at regular intervals.
Drivers also have a tendency to leave parts of their vehicles - like broken glass and plastic/metal shards - behind when they routinely crash into each other, which accumulate on the street. Without regular sweeping, those can pose hazards to other drivers and bicyclists, and risk being washed into the bay via storm drains if not swept.
mmmlinux
From all the trash that everyone leaves everywhere. and broken glass from car windows getting smashed in. its not a nice place.
spankalee
It would be great to see more automatic payment and enforcement. It's great that buses can issue tickets for blocking bus lanes, but I would absolutely love for their to be more automatic enforcement of blocking bike lanes and meter violations.
I'm not in SF a lot these days, but I have noticed some particularly fancy parking meters that at least have tap-to-pay and might have more. Instead of a ticket, you should just be charged for how long you stay. And instead of a strict time limit, just raise the rates the longer you parks.
knowitnone3
In some cities, citizens can take pictures and initiate fines when they see a violation.
aidenn0
Is it illegal to block bike lanes in SF? I ask because it is not illegal to do so in California, according to the learner's permit test my daughter recently took.
scottbez1
The DMV is unfortunately wrong about this, with an invalid interpretation of CVC - the DMV handbook is NOT the law (it's a simplistic layman's interpretation), and is not a valid legal defense.
That said, in SF proper it's absolutely inarguably illegal as a violation called "Obstructing traffic" in the SF transportation code. A bike lane is an active travel lane for vehicles as defined under the CVC (including bicycles), and therefore stopping in one is illegal just like stopping in a car lane. I've had drivers cited for this in the past.
hedora
I read the driver’s manual a few years ago.
Fun fact: If there’s a bus or trolley car picking up passengers at the curb, you must pass it on the right in CA.
I’m almost tempted to try it when there’s no one but a cop around, and then hand the book to them when they pull me over for driving on the sidewalk.
potato3732842
You only love it because you have some perverted dream of 100% enforcement of whatever your rules are. In reality automated enforcement would cause an uproar and the rules would be changed to accommodate the status quo.
echelon
> some perverted dream of 100% enforcement
No illegally parked vehicles?
The negative externalities of illegally parked vehicles charged to the source?
I'll dream of that.
potato3732842
That doesn't change the fact that the laws/rules/etc across all sorts of issues are all written half baked with the assumption that enforcers will be reasonable and all sorts of edge cases don't need to be supported.
hedora
I think you’ll find this leads to infinite fine revenue and higher congestion in pretty much all cities.
1zael
I'm missing something here. How did you get the dataset for this? And that too, in real-time?
Lammy
Love the leaderboard feature. Relevant fee breakdown: https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-docume...
pj_mukh
Part of me says, “What a clever hack! Can I get a notification feature wrt where I parked?”
The other part of me says “Can we just use Public goods more responsibly instead of scratching and clawing our way through maximizing every second of monopolizing public spaces for our personal property storage”
jonny_eh
Probably a good time to tell people that SF operates a "Text Before Tow Program" where you can get a warning that you're about to get towed: https://www.sfmta.com/text-tow-program
jonahx
What's funny is secure IDs could have easily prevented this but, even if the city discovers it and wants to shut it down now, I'd bet actually fixing the system would be too costly (IDs tend to couple to everything).
linehedonist
Amazing. Would be even better if it kept everything in Pacific time. A little confusing to see “3 hours ago” just because I’m on the East Coast.
pimlottc
Ah, I’m in Central, I just assume the data feed was delayed by 2 hours for reason.
FinnKuhn
As someone from Europe I was a bit confused why SF parking cops seemed to only work throughout the night.
Supercompressor
FYI the ticketing time is showing incorrectly out of Pacific time, e.g. here in Eastern all recent activity shows as 3 hours ago. Not a big deal as almost all users would be in Pacific, but wanted to mention.
Great work though, this is rad.
assemmedhat
Awesome. The leading officer in the dashboard should have a raise :)
dinkblam
can you find out how much revenue the city makes each week with those tickets?
Where I live, many people park at intersections right up to the curb making it almost impossible to see oncoming traffic from the right or left. Really scary when you have a 16-year old driver you're trying to keep safe.
There is a very real reason why most intersections require drivers to park 20-30 feet away. Please think of the safety of others and adhere to this rule.