This Bay Area city ratcheted up parking tickets by 86%. Who else is cracking down again since the pandemic?

In the 13 years Kevin Simpson has lived in the city of San Mateo, he has received just three parking tickets. Two came within a three-day span last year.

In both cases, after mistakenly punching the wrong license plate number through the city’s new parking meters, he came back from his routine coffee run to a citation slapped on the windshield.

“My coffee cost me $47,” said an incredulous Simpson.

In the depths of the COVID-19 lockdowns, San Mateo residents like Simpson noticed a new infuriating development. Just as the region was entering a historic medical crisis and insisting everyone stay home, the city hired a new parking enforcement contractor and ratcheted up its ticketing regime. It hasn’t eased up since. Last year, San Mateo issued 48,650 citations – one ticket for about every two residents – an 86% increase from 2019.

“They stand around in little groups downtown, looking to nab people,” said an exasperated Simpson. “You could be one minute over.”

But San Mateo’s skyrocketing parking tickets also underscore gaping disparities in citation rates across the Bay Area, and a window into which cities have ramped up enforcement after turning the other way during the pandemic, according to a Bay Area News Group analysis of a dozen cities’ parking tickets. The analysis reveals that the likelihood of getting stuck with a fine varies dramatically, depending on where in the Bay Area you choose to park.

San Francisco, for instance, issued 1.1 million tickets in 2022 — enough to fill every seat in Chase Center 61 times over. San Jose, the Bay Area’s largest city, issued only 169,773 tickets about 15% of San Francisco’s haul, even though the South Bay municipality’s population is 20% larger.

But unlike every other city surveyed, San Mateo was the only one to crank up tickets even as pandemic lockdowns upended the way people travel.

From 2019 to 2022, the 12 cities analyzed — spanning Palo Alto to Walnut Creek — issued over 7 million parking fines, generating hundreds of millions of dollars from Bay Area drivers. Our analysis also found:

• San Jose is still soft on citations: The Bay Area’s largest city is the major metro area with the slowest return to issuing parking tickets. Citations are down 21% in 2022 compared to 2019.
• Three cities write the vast majority of tickets:  82% of tickets issued in 2022 came from San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley – despite those areas representing just 40% of the population surveyed.
• Enforcement is fully restored in just under half the cities: Oakland, Berkeley, San Mateo, Fremont and Hayward issued more tickets in 2022 than they had pre-pandemic. Others like San Francisco are now eyeing plans to boost enforcement.
• One region gives drivers the most leeway: Throughout the South Bay, parking citations are still way down, including 70% lower in Sunnyvale, 55% in Santa Clara and 48% in Palo Alto compared to 2019.

While speeding and other traffic tickets fall under state law, parking enforcement lands in a gray zone of local politics. Fines for the same parking violation, along with the level of enforcement and payment options, differ widely from city to city. For some Bay Area residents, heavy-handed parking regimes can mean the annoyance of a quick errand morphing into a costly headache. But fines and tows can result in financial devastation for people living out of their cars.

“It’s a very unforgiving system,” said Theresa Cheng, an attorney at the Bay Area Legal Aid. Her low-income and unhoused clients often have their entire lives packed into a vehicle that could be sent to the impound yard for unpaid tickets. “When people come to me with parking ticket issues, I really caution them about getting towed,” said Cheng. “Because I know it’s just a matter of time.”

On Thursday, one of Cheng’s clients, Luritha Deckard, 63, was sobbing inside her blue Chevy van as she pulled out plastic bags filled with clothing. In 2022, Oakland issued 314,097 tickets, the first time the city surpassed 2019 ticketing levels, and Deckard’s van was in the crosshairs. The vehicle, where she once lived, amassed $1,267 in tickets over the past two years. In February, the city towed Deckard’s van while she visited family and now it is stranded in an East Oakland impound yard.

“They took everything,” she said. “My whole body still hasn’t gotten out of knots. Every time I get over this hurdle, it just seems like another hurdle comes. It just hits you hard.”

Citations may be a hassle for drivers, but cities rely on enforcement to free up coveted spaces in busy business districts and prevent drivers from blocking bus stops and fire hydrants. Some of the disparities in parking-ticket practices can be attributed to geography and city planning; San Jose is a vast suburban community with ample free parking and sprawling parking lots, compared to San Francisco’s dense neighborhoods with parking meters lining block after block.

But the citation rates also come down to municipal priorities. In 2019, when the San Mateo City Council hired its new parking enforcement contractor, the city wanted to ramp up tickets in response to “a significant level of community dissatisfaction” as neighborhoods complained over vehicles flouting time restrictions, San Mateo’s police department said in a statement.

Ticket writers came through neighborhoods during the height of pandemic lockdowns, and residents were outraged. The city offered citation amnesty to some drivers caught in the early ticketing sweeps but kept up enforcement. San Mateo now issues over 4.5 times more tickets than neighboring Redwood City, despite similar population sizes and locations.

San Mateo’s mayor and multiple City Council members did not return requests for comment, but the police department said in a statement that hiring contractor LAZ Parking for about $1 million a year is not a money maker but a way to ensure parking is available.

It’s no secret, though, that parking tickets can be a vital revenue source for some agencies. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency raked in $83.5 million from citing drivers in 2022. A spokesman for SFMTA said ticketing is intended to encourage compliance and is “not for revenue generation,” yet a recent SFMTA staff presentation mulled generating another $4 million in increased parking citations to address a looming budget shortfall.

There are roughly 261 citation officers in San Francisco — compared to 35 in San Jose — and the ticketing team’s three-wheeled cruisers have garnered a reputation for ruthless enforcement, handing out tickets during January’s winter storms even as city leaders urged residents to stay put.

One man who racked up tickets and hundreds of dollars in fees offered fellow drivers this advice on Twitter: “Don’t be a loser like me and avoid bringing your car to inner San Francisco.”

Colin Heyne, a spokesperson for San Jose’s Department of Transportation, said San Jose’s low rate of parking tickets is because the city does not target drivers to boost the budget.

“We’re not out there gleefully writing tickets just to ruin your day or just to fill our coffers. That’s just not how we operate our parking,” said Heyne, who is well aware of how different things are in the City by the Bay. “Parking citations are a way of life in San Francisco.

“I don’t live there, but I’ve parked there.”