Jurisdiction data snapshot

San Francisco writes 1.27 million parking citations a year

An analysis of the City of San Francisco's own published citation records shows the sheer scale of parking enforcement — $130M in fines in 2024 alone — concentrated in a knowable set of repeat plates. That's exactly the reach a consented, resident-facing reminder layer is built for.

Source: DataSF Open Data · 23.9M citations since 2008 · figures below are calendar-year 2024
1.27M
citations issued (2024)
$130.5M
in fines (2024)
510,971
unique plates cited (2024)
76%
of citations from repeat plates

A small share of plates drives most citations

Of the 510,971 plates cited in 2024, 208,393 received two or more citations — just 41% of plates, but responsible for 964,228 citations (76% of the total). Nearly 54,000 plates were cited five or more times. Reaching those drivers reliably is the single highest-leverage lever for on-time payment.

208,393 repeat plates

41% of cited plates → 76% of all citations. A consented reminder reaches the exact drivers who generate the most volume.

~54,000 plates cited 5+ times

Chronic repeat parking behavior that today gets a mailed notice per event — easy to miss, easy to let escalate.

What drives the volume (2024)

Street cleaning alone accounts for well over half of all citations. These are routine, high-frequency, easy-to-forget events — the sweet spot for reminders.

Street cleaning
550,257
Meter expired
184,785
Residential overtime
99,195
Yellow (commercial) zone
39,076
No license plates
38,017
Fail to display
36,490

Note: SF publishes violation types as short codes (e.g. "STR CLEAN", "MTR OUT DT"). Labels above are expanded; the two meter codes are merged.

Where it happens (2024)

Citations concentrate around downtown, the Embarcadero, and a handful of corridors.

50 Drumm St
1,961
555 Terry A Francois Blvd
1,931
1300 Embarcadero North
1,124
684 San Jose Ave
904
1445 Lombard St
675

How TheTrafficApp helps

We add a consented, resident-facing reminder layer on top of the enforcement and payment systems SFMTA already runs — no change to pricing, process, or the official record.

1 · Residents opt in

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

2 · Timely reminders

They get an alert when a citation posts — with a one-tap link to SFMTA's official payment page — before it escalates.

3 · More on-time payment

Across 1.27M citations a year, even a small lift in on-time payment is meaningful recovered revenue and fewer escalations.

4 · $0 to pilot

A narrow pilot reading public citation data. We never take the payment or touch the official record.

An honest note on SF's data

Unlike some cities, SF's public dataset does not include a payment-status field, so we can't quantify an unpaid dollar figure here (see the Norfolk report, where $2.88M unpaid is measurable). What SF's data does show is scale and repeat-offender concentration — exactly the reach a notification layer delivers.

Sources & method

Figures are computed directly from the City of San Francisco's published SFMTA Parking Citations open dataset (DataSF resource ab4h-6ztd), which contains 23.9M citations since 2008. Headline numbers use calendar year 2024 (1,266,807 citations). Dollar figures use the fine_amount field; volume and repeat-plate figures are aggregated across 2024. SF does not publish a payment-status field. This is a point-in-time snapshot of public records to illustrate scale — not a claim about any individual driver. Data: data.sfgov.org.

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