CurbScout Data

San Francisco wrote 1.3 million parking tickets last year. Here's exactly where.

We analyzed every parking citation the city recorded over twelve months — 1,328,713 of them, $147 million in fines — to find the blocks, violations, and neighborhoods where drivers actually get caught.

By Kanha Narla · Published August 2026 · Updated October 6, 2026 · Source: the city's open-data citation records · 12 months ending June 30, 2026

The #1 ticket isn't the meter. It's the broom.

Street cleaning alone produced 511,330 citations — more than the next four violation types combined, and roughly $54 million in fines at about $105 a ticket. Expired meters, the violation everyone plans around, come in a distant second.

San Francisco specials hide further down the list: 31,046 tickets for not curbing your wheels on a hill, at roughly $74 each.

Why is street cleaning the biggest ticket?

Because it is the one rule that moves. A meter is where it was yesterday; a sweeping window arrives on a schedule, one side of one block at a time, and the sign that announces it can sit half a block from the space you chose. Most of the 511,330 tickets were written to cars that were parked legally the night before.

It is also the only common ticket you can see coming a week ahead. The schedule for every block is public, which is exactly what CurbScout reads: it warns you before your block's window opens, and it ranks the blocks that are clear for the length of your stay (see how the street-cleaning alerts work). At $105 a ticket, one missed window costs more than two years of the app.

The most-ticketed address in San Francisco

One address out-tickets every other in the city: 50 Drumm Street, at Market by Embarcadero Station — 7,337 tickets in a year, about 20 every day. It isn't a trick block: it's the taxi stand and bus zone in front of the office towers, where a quick "I'll just be a minute" costs a ticket about once an hour, every hour the city is awake.

Where the tickets land

The twelve most-ticketed blocks

By neighborhood

The Mission leads the city by a wide margin — its mix of sweep corridors, transit lanes, and permit zones is unmatched.

• Mission141,383
• Financial District/South Beach111,721
• South of Market76,358
• Tenderloin67,946
• Marina62,040

What does a parking ticket cost in San Francisco?

Every common ticket now costs more than $100. The city's fee schedule effective July 1, 2026 (PDF) sets street cleaning at $105, an expired meter at $107 outside downtown and $108 inside it, overtime in a permit zone at $108, and a red zone or posted tow-away zone at $108. Not curbing your wheels on a hill averaged about $74 in the citation data.

A tow is the expensive version of the same mistake. Recovering a towed car runs about $771 before the ticket itself: a $385 administrative fee, a $317 tow fee and $69 for the first day of storage, with each further day adding $82. Against that, CurbScout's annual plan costs $39.99, less than any single ticket on the list.

How do you avoid the most common tickets?

Know the sweep schedule before you leave the car. It's 38% of all tickets, it's entirely avoidable, and the sign is often half a block from where you parked. Check the day and the side of the street, not just the block.

Check the permit zone, not just the sign. 107,659 tickets a year are for overstaying in a residential permit area, where a visitor usually gets two hours. If you hold a permit, tell CurbScout your zone and those blocks turn parkable for you.

Downtown meters cost a dollar more to get wrong. Expired-meter tickets ran to 211,585 in a year, and the downtown rate is $108 against $107 elsewhere. Meter hours end at different times on different blocks; the app shows the hours and the rate for the block you pick.

The curb color matters more than the meter. Yellow, red, and white zone tickets together outnumber double-parking tickets many times over. Yellow zones are commercial loading during posted hours, and 41,843 drivers a year found that out from a ticket.

On hills, curb your wheels. 31,046 drivers a year learn this one the hard way. Turn the wheels toward the curb facing downhill and away from it facing uphill.

Read next

• Los Angeles's most-ticketed blocks: 1.9 million tickets, mapped
• The 32 cities CurbScout covers, block by block
• What CurbScout costs and how the 14-day trial works
• Set up your residential parking permit in CurbScout
• Why the posted sign always wins over any dataset
• Press kit: facts, assets and a person to email

Where does this data come from, and how fresh is it?

Counts are computed from the City and County of San Francisco's public parking-citation records on the open-data portal, citations issued July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026 — 1,328,713 records. Dollar figures are the face value of fines as issued, not amounts collected. Fine amounts in the cost section are the city's published fee schedule effective July 1, 2026 (PDF), checked October 6, 2026.

Blocks are hundred-blocks rolled up from citation addresses; about 0.7% of citations carry no location and are excluded from block rankings. A small number of records with clearly erroneous dates fall outside the window and are excluded. Violation descriptions are the dataset's own abbreviations, translated conservatively. Data retrieved August 6, 2026. The posted sign always wins over any dataset, ours included; see how accurate CurbScout is.