Jurisdiction data snapshot

Norfolk is leaving $2.88M in parking citations uncollected

An analysis of the City of Norfolk's own published parking-citation records shows nearly half of all citations go unpaid — and a growing share ages into bad debt. This is the kind of gap a consented, resident-facing notification layer is built to close, at no cost to the city.

Source: City of Norfolk Open Data · 45,404 citations · Jan 2022 – Mar 2024
45,404
parking citations issued
$5.94M
total citation value
$2.88M
unpaid (20,346 citations)
45%
of citations never paid

Where every citation ends up

Of 45,404 citations, just over half were paid. A nearly equal share sits unpaid, and $42,710 has already been formally written off as bad debt — money the city will never see.

Paid
23,449
Not paid
20,346
Warning
786
Voided
395
Bad debt / write-off
167

$2.88M is the collectible gap

20,346 unpaid citations represent 48.5% of all citation dollars. Most were never disputed or dismissed — they simply went unpaid. Late notices, address changes, and forgotten mail are the usual causes, not refusal to pay.

A few repeat plates drive a huge share

6,281 license plates account for 2 or more citations each — together responsible for 19,641 citations (43% of the total) and about $2.5M. 847 plates have five or more.

6,281 repeat plates

Drive 43% of all citations and ~$2.5M in value. Reaching these drivers consistently is the single highest-leverage move for compliance.

The most-cited plate: 64 citations

The top individual plate accumulated 64 separate parking citations. Dozens of plates sit in the 20–60 range — chronic, and reachable.

What drives the volume

Five everyday violation types account for the large majority of citations. These are routine, high-frequency events — exactly the kind residents forget to pay.

No parking
11,771
Street cleaning
7,465
Meter expired
7,079
Overtime parking
5,158
Restricted lot/garage
3,417

Note: Norfolk's published data labels the same violation types in two cases (e.g. "NO PARKING" and "No Parking"), suggesting a mid-period system change. Counts above merge the obvious pairs.

Where it happens

Citations concentrate in a handful of corridors and lots — useful for both enforcement planning and targeted resident outreach.

Plume Street Lot
3,934
Granby Street
3,506
E Main Street
2,355
Melrose Parkway
1,097
W Olney Road
883

How TheTrafficApp closes the gap

We don't change enforcement, pricing, or your payment system. We add a consented, resident-facing reminder layer on top of the process you already run.

1 · Residents opt in

Drivers authorize us (a clear consent + DPPA permissible-use basis) to monitor citations tied to their plates.

2 · Timely reminders

When a citation appears, they get an alert before late fees and escalation — with a one-tap link to your official payment page.

3 · You collect more, sooner

More on-time payments, fewer citations aging into bad debt, and lower phone/counter volume for staff.

4 · $0 to pilot

A narrow 60–90 day pilot reading public citation status. We never take the payment or touch your record.

The pitch in one line

Norfolk's own data shows $2.88M uncollected and $42,710 already written off. Even a modest lift in on-time payment across 20,346 unpaid citations is real recovered revenue — at no cost and no system change for the city.

Sources & method

All figures are computed directly from the City of Norfolk's published Parking Citations open dataset (Socrata resource ei2q-6g8n), covering 45,404 citations issued January 2022 through March 2024 (the latest period the city has published). Dollar figures use the violation_amount field; status uses citation_status. "Unpaid" = the city's own "Not Paid" status. Repeat-plate and location figures are aggregated across the full dataset. This is a point-in-time snapshot of public records, presented to illustrate the scale of the collection gap — not a claim about any individual driver. Data: data.norfolk.gov.

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