Between confusing signs, “Mad Max”-style rules of engagement and a seemingly massive disparity from the amount of spaces available versus the number of cars on the road, parking in Los Angeles is not anyone’s favorite pastime.
The only thing that makes parking worse is getting fined for doing it wrong.
Unless you’re the City of Los Angeles.
According to new analysis from Crosstown LA, parking tickets are a major source of revenue for the city, and one specific type is particularly lucrative.
Tickets issued for parking in street sweeping zones accounted for more than one-quarter (26.25%) of all parking citations issued by the City this year. In the first half of 2024, nearly a quarter-million, 241,881 exactly, have been issued for parking in a street cleaning zone — more than any other parking infraction.
The independent news organization used publicly available date from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation as part of its report.
Crosstown found that the typical fine for parking in a street sweeping zone is $73 and if every ticket given out in the first half of 2024 were paid on time, “it would amount to $17.6 million in revenue for the city.”
The year-to-date figures are about on par with the previous three years, around 240,000 from January through the end of June, but significantly higher than in 2020 when parking enforcement was eased due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Prior to that in 2018 and 2019, there were more than 300,000 street sweeping tickets issued over that same timeframe.
Those numbers still pale in comparison to the 2010s when more citations were issued. Crosstown attributes the decline in citations issued due to a large number of vacancies in the Department of Transportation’s traffic enforcement staff.
The areas where people are most likely to be ticketed for parking in a street sweeping zone include Venice, Boyle Heights and Westlake.
The top 10 areas with the most of these tickets issued from Jan. 1 through June 17 is below:
| Rank | Neighborhood | Tickets |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Venice | 8,437 |
| 2 | Boyle Heights | 7,450 |
| 3 | Westlake | 6,885 |
| 4 | Koreatown | 6,540 |
| 5 | Hollywood | 6,344 |
| 6 | Sawtelle | 6,291 |
| 7 | East Hollywood | 6,186 |
| 8 | North Hollywood | 5,848 |
| 9 | Mid-City | 5,419 |
| 10 | Vermont Square | 5,305 |
Thursday tends to be the day when the highest number of tickets are issued, Crosstown reports.
While these parking tickets seem to be a big boon for the City of L.A. and its budget, previous reporting from Crosstown showed that the City was actually losing money on parking enforcement with the service costs outpacing the total number of citations issued from 2017 through 2021.
To read the complete Crosstown report on street sweeping tickets, click here.
