San Francisco's worst neighborhoods and blocks for parking tickets

SpotAngels, a San Francisco-based parking startup, says that it knows which San Francisco neighborhoods accrue the most parking tickets every year. The company divided the number of tickets issued in each neighborhood yearly (crediting SFMTA for compiling that data) by the number of available spaces to determine the ticket trajectory of each block.

Here are some highlights—and a couple of lowlights:

• The most often ticketed neighborhoods are the Financial District, Civic Center, Inner Richmond, and North Beach. Although SoMa accrues the greatest amount of ticket revenue per year, the neighborhood averaged only five tickets per parking space in 2-16. In the FiDi it’s 11, Civic Center 10, and Richmond and North Beach tied at seven.

• The most ticketed block in San Francisco is the 300 block of Townsend, with 4,380 tickets last year. The 500 block of Mission (at First Street) comes in second with 3,942, and 400 First Street pulls up third with 3,1973. Unfortunate parkers have even dubbed 300 Townsend the “Block From Hell,” and the San Francisco Chronicle blames confusing signage for the problem.

• Street cleaning tickets remain the number one cause of parking ire. Last year the city issued 539,980 citations to people who neglected to get out of the way, almost half of the 1,086,253 tickets that year. For comparison, expired parking meters, the second most common problem, came up less than 214,000 times. The 500 Mission block gets the most street cleaning tickets of any in the city, while the aforementioned “Block From Hell” sees more bus zone fines than anything else.

• Twin Peaks garnered the fewest tickets per capita. The lofty neighborhood averaged less than one ticket per spot last year.

For those who have no choice but to park on high-ticket streets, the transit map app Xtreet keeps an updated map of street cleaning schedules.

SFMTA’s parking guide cautions drivers that even legally parked vehicles shouldn’t stay in one spot for longer than 72 hours to avoid being mistaken for an abandoned vehicle.

Meanwhile, the city is still sitting on almost $600,000 from people who overpaid parking fines over a nearly 20 year period, and the clock is ticking on the December 14 deadline after which refunds will be impossible.

Photo by Sailko/Wikicommons

• SpotAngels Parking Tickets [Upbeat PR]
• SF’s Worst Block [SF Chronicle]
• Street Cleaning Map [Xtreet]
• How To Park [SFMTA]
• City May Owe You Parking Ticket Money [Curbed SF]