Wow, great work. This is the kind of citizen hackery we need in society :)
Why do you think that a tool to help people break the rules is somehow good for society?
Find SF parking cops
281–290 of 498 posts
Re: Find SF parking cops
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
They also ticket without towing, where the point is entirely to get money from you.
Where I'm from there's no concept of towing on any parking violations. No one has the right to touch your vehicle, and if the police is involved they'd just contact the owner. The police would only move a car if it's a danger to the public. A tow truck is only something you'd call for assistance, not something you fear seeing. (Parking fines suck, but the municipal ones are usually more reasonable here, even if they…
I've seen news stories about cops impounding nearby Teslas if they think its cameras might have caught something related.
Re: Find SF parking cops
#283Officer 0336 is raking it in for the city. I wonder if there is a correlation with the areas which generate a lot of tickets and other city datasets. Perhaps crime rate or average household income?
You'll probably find a high correlation with the street cleaning dataset (if there is one). Nearly all of the tickets at the top of the leaderboard are street sweeping violations. I wonder if street cleaning is net profitable for the city once you factor in tickets. That would make cutting the cleaning frequency [1] a doubly bad idea. [1] https://sfstandard.com/2025/02/18/san-francisco-city-hall-st...
there is -- https://data.sfgov.org/City-Infrastructure/Map-of-Street-Swe...
"undergoing maintenance" but spot check of data looks correct to me.
Street cleaning tickets are given efficiently and enforcement is conducted to minimize the time that people can't park. 2-4 parking officers drive in front of the street cleaning vehicles and ticket everyone parked. if you're watching at the time you'll see almost every car on the street pull out in front of the officers, circle the block and park right back in the same -- but now clean -- spot. those that don't get tickets.
Re: Find SF parking cops
#284Great implementation but reading the comments I wonder if there is really no sense of the streets as a commons you should use responsibly at all in the US. Not that I am not annoyed by parking tickets, but I am also thankful for the enforcement when I use any means of moving through the city other than a car and at least where I live parking violations are really under-enforced. Maybe that's the difference in San Fra…
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Re: Find SF parking cops
#285offline now. It's a reasonable to expect that this information should not be available in real time to protect parking officers. It's already published daily, as mentioned in other comments.
Re: Find SF parking cops
#286Love the leaderboard feature. Relevant fee breakdown: https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-docume...
Seems weird to me (from nowhere near SF) that some of the cheapest things to do are to block fire stations, fire hydrants and 'fire lanes' (I assume that's like a bus lane but for fire engines, in places that's common enough for whatever reason, like right by a fire station?) - wheelchair/disability related stuff is much more penalised, but even all sorts of other 'regular' mis-parking seems for some reason slightly…
> Have I misunderstood?
It doesn't count the glass shop bill when the fire fighters gleefully fuck up your car to run the hose between the side windows.
Re: Find SF parking cops
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, things like street closures for construction, film shoots, or Neighborhood Night Outs would all need permits to obstruct traffic/close the street.
Fun fact: as a regular citizen you can apply for such a permit online. I did this when we were moving houses to ensure the entire block in front of our house would be clear of cars (or we could tow if required) to make it possible to get a moving truck in on the one-lane street where double-parking would block all access. I filled out the forms. A week or so later the city dropped signs on the sidewalk warning of the…
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Re: Find SF parking cops
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should roads, walkways, and construction sites be blocked just to let someone have more time to avoid a ticket? I imagine the text goes out from SF's servers simultaneously with the tow truck summons. It's a fair shot for both.
I totally agree with you on that, but then why have this program at first place then? I'm just saying that given its SFMTA -- if the tow truck will take say 30 min, they will probably try to wait and issue the ticket later right before tow truck can arrive so that they can get the fines. SFMTA relies heavily on fining people for their revenue and hence incentivized to not act on good faith here. Obviously, it an accu…
If they really want to free up the spot there’s a good chance the driver is closer than the tow truck.
Re: Find SF parking cops
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems weird to me (from nowhere near SF) that some of the cheapest things to do are to block fire stations, fire hydrants and 'fire lanes' (I assume that's like a bus lane but for fire engines, in places that's common enough for whatever reason, like right by a fire station?) - wheelchair/disability related stuff is much more penalised, but even all sorts of other 'regular' mis-parking seems for some reason slightly…
> Have I misunderstood? It doesn't count the glass shop bill when the fire fighters gleefully fuck up your car to run the hose between the side windows.
Gleefully?
because they should express remorse and handle your car with care vs you know, putting out that fire?
Re: Find SF parking cops
#290"each possible ticket number follows a pattern: add 11, except add 4 if the last digit is 6…Only God knows why" That pattern feels suspiciously like how a tacked-on modulo check-digit would act. It seems the real citation number, x, excludes the last digit, and you only needed to +1 increment to it. Then they tack on a last digit, a check-digit, of (x+1) mod 7. That would be the same pattern. The contract for the sys…
It's just x % 7.
They started their example pattern with an citation number 984,946,606 they earlier said wasn't valid rather than 984,946,605 given initially (and shown in the image).