San Francisco parking

This blog serves to help anyone who desires to drive in downtown San Francisco. I had a nice conversation with an individual yesterday who is a high-ranking parking official for downtown. She had some good tips for parking violations.

Watch out for driveways, if ANY part of your car (including bumpers) hangs out into the curved part of a driveway you are liable to be ticketed and towed, but ONLY at the landowners discretion. However, if the inevitable happens and you do see your car being towed you do have one right. If part of your car is still at the curb, then the tow truck driver HAS to put down your car and you just pay the citation (if a ticket has been written or the parking control officer is present), but when they pull away it is at the tow truck driver's discretion whether to give your car back or not.

Watch out for areas that are parking most of the day, but at certain hours are commuter lanes. If you park in this area and say the commuter lanes go from 1500-1700 and you are parked at 1505, you will get cited and towed. In fact, the parking control officers (as they like to be called) ride around with the tow truck drivers and it is not uncommon to be cited and towed in 2-3 minutes flat. That is unbelievably fast and your car is gone )-; only to be retrieved by paying $285 and up! By the way, parking citations went up recently, I was told that most are $85 a pop!

Also, an officer can write you a ticket and not give it to to you or place it on your car. This happens typically when someone is sitting in their car in an expired metered spot. I am told that officers have been assaulted in the past and prefer not to have to place the citation on your car, so it gets mailed to you instead (not sure how this applies to out-of-state residents such as myself). I had good luck sitting in my car in metered spots, but know that it illegal to do so and it is discretionary to the parking control officer to tell you if they are writing you a ticket while you are in it.

One last comment, when you get a ticket from a police officer (not a parking control officer), double check to see that all the information is filled out. If not, that ticket is DEFINITELY protestable. You can usually identify if a police officer has written your ticket by PD... at the top. What is also worth protesting is when on the ticket the location the officer gave is too vague to identify where your vehicle is, for instance "handicap ramp, Chestnut", well there might 4 handicap ramps on Chestnut Street, which one is it?

Keep in mind the colors of curb markings too; yellow is for business, I think red is for emergency vehicles. Also note the color and messages of the meters themselves. ALWAYS make sure to look within 100 feet of where you are parking or 5 spots in front or behind you for a sign. If the sign is beyond that distance, you're usually in the clear.

Good luck playing the parking game, it is a cutthroat one.