Parking Enforcement: Time for some AI

November 30, 2025

My travels over the Thanksgiving holiday took me to a city that uses the centralized kiosks to take your money and log in your license plate but not require the receipt to be displayed on the dash. You key in your license plate number, and it checks to see if it is a valid plate. How it does that for plates from all over the country is a bit of a mystery as well as not error-proof from the citizen’s perspective. This city enforces parking until 9 pm downtown and it’s now dark by 5pm so I got to do this in semi-darkness. I mis-keyed the plate by one digit–a 2 instead of a 3. Someone must have that plate since it “validated” me. My bad.

When I returned to find a ticket on my windshield even though I still had 20 minutes on the payment, it took me a few minutes to figure out why. Here’s where the AI comes in. When the officer scans my plate and comes up empty a little bit of AI could suggest that a plate in that zone that matches six of the seven numbers is probably not a parking scofflaw. That would be a worthwhile AI feature.

Luckily, I printed the receipt even though it wasn’t needed to be displayed so I have some hope of getting the ticket expunged. If I didn’t have the receipt I would be out of luck and $45. We shall see.

Posted in Parking

5 responses to “Parking Enforcement: Time for some AI”

HMB

December 1, 2025

I once mixed up the zero and the O keying in my plate a few years ago and got a ticket for that.
In San Bruno, LAZ (their enforcement contractor) has an employee hanging out downtown who gives out tickets while people are walking to the kiosk. So you’d better take your receipt to contest that!
Joe

December 4, 2025

Here’s the rest of the story. I passed thru San Luis Obispo on the way back north and had time to stop at the PD to clear the ticket. They cannot do that at the desk, you have to go to the appeals website, enter your information and a photo of the receipt. No hassle there, right?

And the kicker? I asked the desk clerk how often this happens and she said, “two or three times a day”! And those are just the people who have a receipt and make the effort to clear it. Talk about a scam. It’s as bad as the get-smogged-every-two-years scam. When was the last time you had a car fail smog? I asked my local guy, Sam, on Highland and he said hardly ever. The only time it happens with any car from the last 15-20 years is when someone gets a new battery and the changeout clears the on-board data. Another scam. Meanwhile people drive around with broken tail lights and brake lights all the time since there is no annual inspection like back East.
Linda

December 9, 2025

Welcome to San Mateo! Take a look at B Street–that horrible English only machine and license plate entry system with pretty steep parking $$ on one side of the street and meters on the other-new meters–go figure. And if you do not read English -good luck. Apparently there is a lot of money to be made in parking!
perfectly1a88429a33

December 11, 2025

What is wrong with English only?
Jennifer Pfaff

December 11, 2025

That is true, and if you are too tall, or the glare hits the screen in the wrong way, good luck reading them. I think SM gets the award for the most poorly designed parking gizmos. Unfortunately, some of our own parking meters are also hard to read. Several down at the station seem have moisture inside and are illegible.

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