What are you most likely to get a ticket for in SF? Here's a breakdown
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- We've been telling you about how cities around the Bay have been struggling to enforce new parking rules near crosswalks. A new law prevents parking within 20 feet of the pedestrian crossing.
People were simply too confused when it came to parking at certain intersections that were NOT painted red.
A year ago, here's what SFMTA assumed people would do.
"No, it will not be painted because it's a state law, it's basically like a driving rule. That's part of the reason why we're doing this story to increase awareness," said Ricardo Olea of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.
We now know that didn't work so well, so the city decided rather than cite people, the SFMTA would spell it out for them.
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"What we're going to be doing is expediting our approach to get curbs painted red," said SFMTA's Acting Director of Transportation, Julie Kirschbaum.
That project will take about 18 months to complete.
According to SFMTA, the Mission and Russian Hill neighborhoods had the most daylighting warning citations issued.
Those daylighting tickets were never intended to bring extra revenue, but failing to move for street cleaning, on the other hand, continues to be the top parking violation in the city.
According to SFMTA data, from January of 2024 to January 2025, more than 570,000 tickets were issued, which means the city brought in more than $51 million from those citations alone.
Unpaid or expired meters followed a distant second, with more than 190,000 citations.
Tow-away zone and yellow zone tickets are also a big money maker. The area of downtown between the Ferry Building and the Ball Park generated the most citations.
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"We actually live around here and we tell people not to park on the street around here because it seems like it's especially, I don't know if it's the area, but it does seem they really watch it, said San Francisco resident Jim Marcmin.
"I park in Oakland and I take Bart in because I don't want to mess around trying to park in the city, it's too complicated," said Oakland resident Nicky Batill.
But perhaps the one violation that irks people the most is all those drivers that double park - blocking traffic. That's a $108 ticket. But, at times, hard for traffic enforcement officers to catch.
Car-sharing companies like Lyft and Uber are no exception.
But what about self-driving cars? Waymo vehicles are programmed to find a safe spot to pull over before picking up or dropping off passengers.
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But when we spoke to Waymo's Product Manager, Chris Ludwick more than a year ago, he told us there are times when they are forced to double park.
"If we can't, we'll stop in lane but we're also able to detect if we are blocking traffic behind us and we'll actually move along, circle the block if needed to prevent causing a disruption," said Ludwick.
Here's the rub, driverless cars cannot be ticketed because California law states that citations must be issued to the actual driver of the car.
