\u201cCitations are a tool to ensure compliance with parking laws, which help keep our streets safe and use our limited curb space efficiently and fairly,\u201d an SFMTA representative said in an emailed statement on Tuesday afternoon, after Walz\u2019s site was no longer functional. \u201cWe welcome creative uses of technology to encourage legal parking, but we also want to make sure that our employees are able to do their jobs safely, and without disruption.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ticket Master<\/p>\n
The idea for Find My Parking Cops was first sparked when Walz\u2019s roommate got a parking fine. Walz noticed the nine-digit identification number on the ticket and started looking for patterns. By using publicly available information, he believed he cracked the code.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems each possible ticket number follows a pattern: add 11, except add 4 if the last digit is 6. So, no ticket can end in 7, 8, or 9,\u201d Walz wrote in a blog post<\/a> explaining the site. \u201cSo, the ticket after 984,946,606 is actually 984,946,610, and after that is 984,946,621.\u201d<\/p>\n He suspected this absurd-seeming pattern was due to limitations baked into the software used by parking control officers. Whatever its reason for existing, the pattern of sequential ticket IDs, paired with parking officers likely claiming batches of ticket numbers, meant Walz was able to track their routes by plotting each parking ticket on a map as soon as it was entered into the system. A car owner could look at the activity of the officers currently out on patrol and see if any of them were slowly descending on their neighborhood.<\/p>\n