Regular community meetings at San Francisco’s Bayview Police Station are usually sparsely attended. But on a recent Tuesday, all the seats were taken, and there was little room to stand.
The big draw? The opportunity to confront two representatives from San Francisco’s parking-enforcement division over the agency’s recent crackdown on vehicles encroaching on the neighborhood’s sidewalk.
Over the past month, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has gone on a ticketing blitz, according to video footage and more than a dozen Bayview-Hunters Point residents who spoke with Mission Local.
Up to five parking-enforcement vehicles at a time have been filmed rolling down the residential streets of the southeastern neighborhood, sometimes several times a day, issuing tickets to cars parked in driveways and sticking out onto the sidewalk.
Seen trailing closely behind the phalanx of parking enforcement vehicles is a San Francisco police cruiser.
“Right now, it’s starting to feel more like harassment,” said one Bayview resident to SFMTA officers Shanika Bell and Trevor Adams at the Thursday meeting, shouting over the dozens of residents crowded into the small community meeting room.
“If I see seven to eight vehicles coming down my street, followed by police cars, it doesn’t feel like you’re trying to work with us,” he added, to cheers and nods of affirmation from the crowd.
“It does feel like an attack,” chimed in another woman. “There’s a lot of PTSD in this area because of the police. We weren’t growing up terrified of meter maids.”
Bayview Station Captain Bernadette Robinson said parking enforcement is up following longstanding complaints of rampant parking violations that disrupt the flow of traffic and sidewalk access.
In Bayview, double-parked cars or vehicles blocking the sidewalk are a common sight, though it’s certainly not the only neighborhood in the city with repeat parking infractions.
A history of altercations with parking enforcement officers over tickets in the neighborhood, said Robinson, led to a lack of enforcement over the past several years.
SFMTA’s parking-ticket data from 2025 shows that the neighborhood had one of the lowest rates of parking tickets per resident compared to the rest of the city, though most tickets were issued for sidewalk-parking violations.
The SFMTA, said Robinson, refused to increase enforcement in the neighborhood without the protection of the police department. But the partnership between the agency and the department has raised some eyebrows in a neighborhood with a long history of police scrutiny and brutality.
Supervisor Shamann Walton, who represents the neighborhood, said he has received a torrent of complaints from his constituents. He said that he does not have jurisdiction over either the SFMTA nor the police department.
“I don’t like the fact that the MTA is cracking down on a community where a lot of people have to drive, but that is something that is beyond our control,” said Walton.
As for the involvement of the police department in doling out tickets, he said, “I should hope officers have other things they can do to keep the community safe.”
Residents who spoke to Mission Local said they have not yet noticed police officers interacting with anyone who receives a ticket, but felt that their presence has intimidated neighbors.
“As of three weeks ago, I’m seeing the cops following them probably every other day,” said Roberto Mejia, a Bayview resident. “What’s been most concerning is the intensity and frequency of enforcement. It feels like our neighborhood is being heavily targeted.”
Mejia, who has an 18-month old child, often parks in his short driveway and, like many other neighbors on his block, his car slightly sticks out onto the sidewalk. It’s not enough to block the walkway, he said, but it’s noticeable.
A hallmark of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s administration has been solutions to seemingly small problems, including allowing residents to park in their driveways, provided they don’t encroach onto the sidewalk.
Prior to legislation passed by the planning commission last year, San Francisco residents were technically not allowed to park without obscuring the car in their own driveway, though many residents across the city have done so for years.
Some Bayview residents who spoke with Mission Local say they have parked in the same spot in their driveway for more than a decade, perhaps sticking out a bit into the sidewalk, but haven’t received tickets until this month.
“If I’m paying property taxes, I should be able to park in my driveway,” said one resident at the Bayview community meeting, who said she was fined for their car sticking into the sidewalk.
Despite the recent change to driveway-parking rules, SFMTA parking officer Trevor Adams said residents should perhaps refrain from parking in their driveway at all to avoid penalties.
“I was raised to think of a driveway as just that, an easement,” said Adams, making a hand motion to demonstrate a car pulling out of a driveway and into a garage.
Adams, who said he grew up in the Fillmore, where he was told he could not park a car in the driveway, suggested residents simply clean out their garage.
For Leyla Akincilar, who often goes on walks with her three-year-old child in a stroller, a blocked sidewalk can pose a dangerous conundrum. Frequently, she said, she’s had to choose whether to walk into the street to get around a parked car or head back in the other direction.
“Cars also drive recklessly in this neighborhood,” she said. “I hated having to walk into the street. Someone is going to get seriously injured or killed.”
Akincilar, who lives on a quiet Bayview cul-de-sac, said her neighbors, who only parked in their driveways temporarily, were shocked to receive a ticket. At the same time, drivers who notoriously double- and even triple-park on Third Street, she said, have not been ticketed.
“It’s arbitrary, at best, and selectively ignores repeat offenders at worst,” she said.
Two weeks before the enforcement operation, the SFMTA tucked flyers into the windshields of parked cars in the neighborhood, warning neighbors of what was to come.
Parking is an issue in the area. Residents say they regularly circle their block multiple times a day to find parking, and many homes have multiple cars. Some have even taken to trying to save parking spots with traffic cones.
Some residents believe the solution may lie in implementing 90-degree parking in the neighborhood, a move Supervisor Alan Wong has attempted to bring to the Sunset to increase available parking.
Toni Hines, who lives on La Salle Avenue in Bayview, said residents have unofficially parked at a 90-degree angle for more than 50 years, but only recently began receiving tickets for this. At the community meeting, Hines delivered a page-long petition asking that the SFMTA allow for perpendicular parking.
Jennifer Devine, who signed the petition, said her two vehicles have been ticketed five times in the past month.
“As a teacher in the public schools, getting $108 ticket every few days is untenable,” said Devine. “It seems grossly unfair.”
As a Bayview resident who walks in the neighborhood, I am happy to finally see some enforcement. The lack of enforcement for many years has obviously resulted in a sense of entitlement to park however you feel like because there will be no consequences. When you’ve been getting away with bad behavior for years, enforcement feels like harassment.
I’ve noticed that many of my neighbors who routinely park on the sidewalk are now discovering they can actually fit all their cars on the street by parallel parking in front of their own driveways, which means they could have been parking legally all along but couldn’t have been bothered because it’s easier to just pull up onto the sidewalk. Pure entitlement and laziness.
That being said, I do understand residents who make an effort to have some consideration for pedestrians feeling like they’re different from the ones who literally leave zero space by completely blocking the sidewalk, but there is a good reason why parking rules are not a matter of interpretation by the interested party. Knowing that even a few inches encroaching onto the sidewalk is against the rules, please park accordingly going forward and you’ll be fine.
I also encourage my neighbors to clear out the junk from their garages. Most people here live in single family homes but don’t use their garages for parking and there’s really no excuse. And don’t tell me how small your garage is. I live in a house that is over a hundred years old and once I’m parked in the garage I can barely open the door to get out. There was a steep learning curve in understanding how to maneuver in and out and I got many scratches on the side of my car until I figured it out. But with a little effort and patience, you can do it! Or, you know, just keep getting parking tickets and complaining about it.
If you go to other parts of the world where the urban areas are more genuinely urbanized than in this country, the drivers tend to be way better at negotiating tight fits and making the best use of available space for driving and parking.
Part of it is just a matter of practice and exposure to narrower urban streets, and part of it is our country’s exceptionally advanced case of metastatic stage 4 car size bloat, but it’s also worth considering whether a culture of bad driving could just be an inevitable consequence of car dependency: the more we treat the ability to drive as a necessary part of full membership in society, the more unthinkable it becomes to demand that someone cut back or give up on driving just because they happen to not be good at it, and the more politically difficult it becomes for traffic/parking enforcers and DMVs to hold drivers to high standards.
“for sidewalk parking, but also for sticking out of your driveway”
I fail to see any reasonable basis for making such a big deal of this alleged distinction. Blocking the sidewalk with a car is blocking the sidewalk with a car. A driveway isn’t some kind of laws-of-physics cheat code that magically empowers a pedestrian to walk through solid steel. If there’s an exception where you’re allowed to block the sidewalk with a parked car in your driveway as long as it’s only a teeny-weeny little bit, then similar exceptions should also apply to riding up onto the curb from a street parking space, or sticking out into a painted no-parking zone or a crosswalk.
The car-owner entitlement oozing from this entire article is as thick as a vintage midcentury LA smog cloud. Sorry if people have to learn the hard way that there are limits to their ability to appropriate public land as a free open-air storage facility for their own private property, but them’s the breaks.
Will, it depends on the width of the sidewalk. So for example out in the Richmond you can find sidewalks that are 12, 15 or even 20 feet wide. Clearly a vehicle parked on such a sidewalk will impede nobody and such vehicles are never ticketed from what I see.
Good. Homeowners in San Francisco are wealthy by definition, compared to those of us who are renters. Homeowners don’t own the sidewalk but act like they do.
I hate it when I’m walking on the sidewalk in my neighborhood and I have to step out into the street because some homeowner thinks it’s perfectly fine to park his car outside his 3-car garage.
Put your car in your garage. That’s what it’s for. If your garage is stuffed full of bespoke weightlifting gear, park on the street like the rest of us. You didn’t buy the sidewalk when you bought your home.
Renter, yes owners do not own the sidewalk. But the city will hold property owners responsible for all kinds of things that happen on the sidewalk outside their house, including dumping, littering, graffiti, sidewalk cracks, overhanging trees and so on.
I got a ticket when someone dumped a pile of trash outside my front door in the middle of the night. I successfully fought it but still . .
About time!
Seriously. Neighborhood thugs threaten parking meters so they stopped enforcing the law. They are scared for their safety and need police escorts to do their job. This neighborhood got a pass for too long and now they have to live like the rest of us and pay fines when they get caught. If the irs caught me cheating on my taxes, I can’t say, “I’ve been doing it for a decade so it should be allowed”. No pity for lawbreakers. Some pictures of the cars “inching” into the driveways would have added some clarity to what folks are talking about. If a wheel chair can pass on the sidewalk, then they shouldbt get a ticket. If it can’t, they should ,
Parking enforcers have it rough: they inspire all the entitled road-ragey loathing you’d expect for cops running speed traps, yet with all the unarmed public-servant defenselessness of a postal carrier executing Olympic-worthy vaults to escape an off-leash ankle-biting terrier.
Throw in the nasty sexist diminutive history embedded in the term “meter maid”, and it’s easy to see why lawbreaking car owners would feel so empowered to physically attack them on the job.
“There ought to be a law…” Enforcing existing laws inconsistently provides opportunity for those who would behave in a less civilized fashion to take advantage of the common good. Civilized society means working together (not blocking ADA sidewalk access / creating a walking safety hazard by partially parking in your driveway, but obstructing the sidewalk, just as an example). Change is hard, but a lot of work went in to getting the laws where they are today. If you’d like to change the laws, there are ways, but in the meantime…
They shouldn’t have let this slide for years, now people feel entitled to break the law.
Inconsistent enforcement has done a lot to help inculcate the entitled mentality among “ordinary” drivers that traffic and parking laws are nothing more than an illegitimate gotcha for revenue-raising and/or pretextual traffic stops.
That said, part of the problem is that this mentality actually ends up resulting in *less* pressure for the people who write these laws to ensure that they’re rational or reasonable, if so many people are going to take the de facto view that any law that imposes any kind of obligation on drivers is inherently unreasonable no matter what it actually says.
Yet SFMTA will do nothing for people roping off and coning to protect “their” parking spots. SFPD says it’s an SFMTA issue, SFMTA says we wont move ANYTHING…so go talk to the cops. Total joke. 90 degree parking can’t come soon enough. Maybe SFPD should hang out and catch people running stop signs for their budget windfall…the Bayview is INSANE when it comes to reckless driving.
Ticket them or change the rules. Letting lawlessness flourish sucks. If there isn’t enough street parking, sounds like they should raise the price of the resident permits.
Man, these people need to learn to park correctly. Then no tickets, problem solved.
Jay, 1st of all who r u referring to as “these people”. Obviously u don’t live in the BVHP community and are unaware of this situation at all. A presedent was set decades ago that residents City-Wide parked in their driveways being unaware that this is a violation against it and it was never a problem. Then The Mayor goes on TV saying it’s ok to park in our driveways and the next week we begin getting $108 tickets w/o explanation. The BVHP community is being discriminated against, profiled and targeted for this enforcement even though (according to data as reported in this article) complaints are the lowest in the City. No other community in San Francisco is being ticketed or even patrolled for driveway violations like BVHP. What’s wrong with this picture. This must also be a City and SFMTA enforcement campaign to help raise revenue for the budget deficit recently reported by the Mayors office and the SFMTA. The SFMTA needs to get their act together and come up with other solutions to resolve their never ending budget woes and not pass the costs and problem onto tax paying, hard working property owners. 90 degree parking was suggested at the Tuesday meeting, as well as, educating home owners about the violation, The Captain, and SFMA representatives said they would meet, discuss and get back to us via email. We asked for a moratorium on ticketing until that time. We’ll, ticketing resumed almost immediately. We need to work for a solution to get more parking in the area and to allow residents to park in their own driveways and leave room for pedestrians. Residents are parking in their driveways because there is nowhere else to park. We need to work together for solutions to the problem
Janet, I think you know who and what the commenter meant by the term YOU PEOPLE, we’ve heard that before lol I’m one of those YOU PEOPLE,and proud of it, as a native San Franciscan l watched, how the view. double rock, and the hill has changed many of the commenter are relatively new and in part no nothing about the history of the community their complaining about so I won’t go there, I’ll approach it on a different level, many long term residents of the bay view still live there, many of our seniors and young folks know if you don’t park across the sidewalk you might have to park blocks away, and walk back to your house or apartment rental, I heard stories people have to walk 10 blocks to get back to the house and some who even called Uber… one issue that needs to be addressed is that with the highest seats in the nation, young adults are living at home longer than before and many times working outside the city and need a car, which brings me to the next point,in my neighborhood and on my block every house has at least two or more cars and some have three or more, and alot of those folks are not of the YOU PEOPLE variety… people of color/minority but definitely not you people, I think that’s one of the that needs to be addressed every house in the city should be allowed at least one place to park in front of there own house whether in the driveway or sidewalk, people who park across the sidewalk aren’t doing it because there don’t care about anybody else.. it’s because there’s no place else to park.. but how do we address the shortage of parking…??? They painted the curb red 20 feet from the intersection, making parking even more difficult and write more tickets to the people who can afford it the least, oh yeah to those Karen’s in the comments get over yourself…. that car that’s blocking your path on the sidewalk might belong to a elderly or person with physical disabilities, why don’t we explore expanding parking in areas like abandoned lots etc etc they won’t because it’s more profitable to give tickets to YOU PEOPLE, like me
Jay, I suspect that will happen when all cyclists stop at every stop sign, and pedestrians never jaywalk.
Ben, I think you’ve mistaken Mission Local for Nextdoor.
90 degree parking would also improve street safety by narrowing them. Wider streets lead to higher speeds. We used to have 90 degree parking on our street (unofficially for a couple of decades) but recently the city came and painted 45 degree diagonals. It halved the amount of parking, and the car speeds noticeably increased.
Mathew, not necessarily. Many SF streets that have 90 degree parking are one-way, precisely to allow such parking without increasing vehicular congestion and obstructions.
I’m it’s been neglected for a long time and now all of the sudden something is being done about it and the people aren’t happy , but if you don’t give them a reason to come out there and ticket you , then there is no problem .so just make sure that the car you are driving or parking is done legally . Then they can send as many meter maids as they want to , but if there’s nothing that they can write you up for , then they are wasting their time and the city’s money , and that’s something you can report. Remember that they are city employees and we pay them . It doesn’t mean to disrespect them. Just don’t give them any reason too go there .
“Some have even taken to trying to save parking spots with traffic cones.”
If I had my way, _this_ unbelievably obnoxious habit would be punishable with jail time, so some of you should be grateful I don’t yet, I guess.
The sense of entitlement San Franciscans have about parking – where literally any bit of empty public space that’s large enough just magically belongs to them to store their vehicle at everyone else’s expense – boggles my mind. Finding a _legal_ place to store your F-150 is your business, not ours. Sorry.
Surprised the kids can’t read when we have teachers who can’t learn not to park on the sidewalk after getting 5 tickets.
A teacher who has two cars, for that matter! And since the article repeatedly goes out of its way to make the complainants seem as sympathetic as possible by pointing out when they have kids, one is forced to assume that this is a person who owns two cars purely for the sake of owning two cars, but without having a place to legally park them.
I am not familiar with the situation in the Bayview, but I know that elsewhere, SFMTA has come out taking surveys whether neighbors wanted this or that block converted to angled or 90-degree parking.
@SFMTA: Has something like that happened there recently?
If I were surveyed, I’d vote no on 90 or 45-degree parking. It blocks the view of pedestrians trying to cross the street, and cars backing out of these spots are dangerous to cyclists.
As BVHP resident, not to my knowledge. I think 90 degree parking would help a lot. We just need more of an open and transparent dialog about this and other issues that may arise. So far that’s not happening.
a neighbhor of mine lets the fees stack up to $10,000 or more. he got rid of his last car and now his new car is also accruing fees. at least the last year, maybe 2 he has been doing this and the city just keeps pointlessly writing tickets he never pays and there is no enforcement.
I just downloaded the parking citations database for sidewalk parking to see what the breakdown by supervisorial district was for citations issued this year.
Previous years’ citations had populated the supervisor_district field. But the field was empty for citations issued this year.
Not every street can support 90 degree parking the street has to be wide enough to accommodate it .
I had a short driveway (like 6 or7 feet) that left the back end of my compact hang slightly over the sidewalk (maybe a foot) in the Outter Sunset. After receiving several tickets, I started parking out in the street but parallel to my own driveway. Law allows the tenant or homeowner to block their own driveway. Problem solved.
It might be safer if they didn’t leave a physical ticket on the car. Just snap a photo of the infraction & license plate from inside the Cushman, and then issue it by mail.
There needs to be some level of discretion. My car sticks out 6 inches onto a 12 foot wide sidewalk, less than the bushes of multiple neighbors on my block but I still got hit with multiple tickets after living here for half a decade with no issues. Sure people blocking the sidewalk should be ticketed but when 90% of the walkway is perfectly usable this just feels like a cash grab in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city.
I totally agree with you. If there is a path for wheelchaired person then there is a good amount of space. We have a business and there are 5 different companies operating from same warehouse. Couple days ago, I stop on the side walk, which I know it is a no-no, I saw the dpt officers. Quickly one came out and told me to move with his hendheld device. I told him just need to drop two boxes, he said no. Then I move my car and backed up into the freight gate which is permitted by the city building department. He told me to move again, I said this is a freight gate and I will drop my two boxes and leave. He was still talking and I got angry. I said there must be a mutual understanding to solve this better and I told him at 6 AM no one was walking. He was still talking and I have decided to follow him so I can talk with his supervisor. But when someone follows them, they just pushed their tricycles so fast you can not catch them. I saw the sfpd car behind me and I stopped the officer and trying to explain this is ridicules. And police officer told me if i didn’t get any ticket, go back to my life. This is the problem with government agencies, they look into everything from to fine or not to fine perspective. Instead, help residents solve the stupid and easy problems with some insight. He was telling me there are people leaving the cars like a week and I was telling him it is a business warehouse and freight gate so I suppose to back up to conduct my business. Such a sad situation how this city managed, or unmanaged.
The sidewalk parking out here is pretty insane, really. I’ve always noticed just how bad it was, and also kinda understood why they might be more forgiving out here b/c of the economics and the history of marginalization. I work in the Bayview and catch the 24 bus here, and in my 7-block walk to work from the bus I usually have to step out into the street as much as ~25-40 times in that stretch. Not talking about a car sticking out past its property line, I’m talking flat-out parallel parking. I’ve had a driver literally nudge me off the sidewalk with his bumper, at the bus stop where he parks in front of the church where he works on Newcomb/Newhall. This one stretch of Newhall has lots of jet skis for some reason, all parked in trailers on the sidewalk. It’s always been a bit surprising just HOW little it’s enforced out here, esp when my neighbors get ticketed so frequently even when they aren’t blocking sidewalk access at all (but do cross the property line, so…)
There are specific times that I think most people forgive – the street sweeping, for example, where folks will pull up onto the sidewalk and wait for the sweeper to pass, but then immediately drop back down to the pavement.
I’m glad to see this neighborhood joining the rest of the city in terms of parking enforcement, and also completely understand how frustrating it must be after having been allowed by lack of enforcement for so long.
Next I wanna see them address driving over here! Can’t count how many times I’ve almost been mowed down by someone going 50+ down the bike lane (or even the completely wrong side of the street FFS) to avoid having to stop like everyone in front of them. Or crossing at a green light, and the cross traffic not giving AF about laws.
Great article. If you do write another article about this I feel like 2 points should be made.
1) this is a low income area and set far from the rest of the city. Cars are NEEDED in this area and multiple families living in one dwelling makes for more cars but now less parking
2) I have 3 teenager girls who I do not want walking home from public transportation or walking 6 blocks from their parked car at night. It’s dangerous in this neighborhood. I love this neighborhood but there are certain things that we don’t feel comfortable with and that’s walking around later at night alone as a female.
What’s appalling to me is the deep terrible incompetence from our “supervisor” Walton. What do you even mean with this quote?
“ “I don’t like the fact that the MTA is cracking down on a community where a lot of people have to drive, but that is something that is beyond our control,”
Uh yeah it’s the law? Pushing to change laws is your JOB. you can do something you are a supervisor. In this same article there is a snippet about a supervisor in the sunset pushing to implement 90 degree parking. What do you mean you can’t do anything? Totally worthless can’t wait until you are gone. You don’t even live here why would you care?
If they want to crack down on that, they also need to clear those cones that people holding parking spaces in front of their house and issue citations too. Build more parking spaces.
San Francisco should just provide the tools and the equipment to the parking enforcement officers performing their duties safely without the need for police officers to accompany them on these enforcement operations. The parking enforcement officers should be trained in self defence and de-escalation, and have peace officer arrest powers, so they can protect themselves. To perform their duties safely, the City and County should require their parking enforcement officers to wear body protective vests, and carry batons and handcuffs for self defense in case of violent confrontations. Body worn cameras are also effective to deter assaults and for prosecutions. If San Francisco is ordering their parking enforcement officers to ticket vehicles in a historically troubled district, then it is critical that San Francisco should also ensure their safety. Still do not how San Francisco only call them “parking control officers” when they are doing a lot more then parking enforcement and constantly dealing with the public at times not so pleasant. They should be be called the job titles of “parking and traffic enforcement officers”, or simply “traffic officers”,
We should have 90 degree parking on every city street wide enough to sustain it. Make roads alternately one-way if needed.
Unofficially sidewalk parking is allowed during street cleaning hours. A SFPD cop told me they never ticket for that, unless it is egregious.
In my neighborhood, there’s a half block street that has six “lanes” of parking: both sides of the street have the regular parking lane, the traditional double parking lane, and the sidewalk.
Even with Buchanan Mall construction and large vehicles associated with it, there has been no SFMTA enforcement. SFPD is fully aware of the problem – they race to that location regularly and have problem getting to where they want to go, especially when they need a dozen cars. Paramedics have parked their ambulance at the corner and schlepped their equipment to the site of the emergency further down the alley that is inaccessible to them because the skinny “driving” lane that remains available is too narrow for their vehicle.
This is punishing poverty. Everyone knows homes in working class neighborhoods are packed with people grappling with high rents in SF, and with them comes the vehicles they need to live because there is pathetic public transit and also because everyone in SF is a paycheck away from having to LIVE in their cars. But SFMTA is ticketing people. Daniel Lurie HATES you.
People truly living in poverty wouldn’t be able to afford a car.
Thats a silly way to think. Many people drive cars that are worth less than some people spend on food in a month. My car was $800 dollars and I need it to get to both work and school. Its not physically possible for me to go to school and work on public transport and make it to both on time, and 80% of my income goes to rent and food. Pretty sure this is considered poverty by most sane people
I’m sorry, but even poor people ought to follow city laws.
The nepo baby mayor is trying to help balance the city budget using traffic enforcement.
Just a guess on my part, but I would conjecture that the sidewalk parking enforcement, along with all of the curb ramp improvements in the city is not to ensure clear and safe passage for pedestrians, but is to ensure clear and safe access for delivery robots.
Just a guess…