Pacific Palisades avoids parking pain, as ticketing in L.A. remains below pre-pandemic levels
If you are looking for a positive move by the city of Los Angeles in the wake of the wildfires, then consider the unexpected sector of parking enforcement: In the Pacific Palisades, just five citations were handed out in the months after the Jan. 7 blaze started.
In total, vehicles in the community were ticketed 118 times from Jan. 1–Feb. 28, according to publicly available Los Angeles Department of Transportation data. Last year, 1,722 citations were dispensed in that period.
Other Angelenos may also be feeling some relief. In the first two months of 2025, 283,423 tickets were slapped across windshields citywide. That’s down 7.8% from the same period last year.
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Across Los Angeles, ticket activity remains below pre-pandemic totals. In the mid-2010s there were generally about 2.3 million citations handed out each year. That dropped to 1.5 million in 2020 when parking restrictions were relaxed due to the onset of the coronavirus. Last year, the city tallied 1,865,848 tickets.
Still, there are spots where parking comes with a sizable risk. In the period from Jan. 1, 2024–Feb. 28, 2025, two locations in Venice each produced more than 3,000 tickets—more than anywhere else in the city—according to Department of Transportation data. There were 3,507 citations written for vehicles on the 1600 block of Irving Tabor Ct., and 3,043 along 1301 Electric Ave.
At those two locations, 4,941 tickets, or 76% of the total, were for an expired meter.
Filling city coffers
As painful as they are, parking tickets play a role in the economic life of Los Angeles. According to the City Controller’s office, fines are expected to generate about $110 million in the current fiscal year.
That’s down from $165 million a decade ago, but there is an even more significant divide. As Crosstown reported last week, the city continues to spend millions of dollars more each year on parking enforcement—through salaries, pension contributions and more—than it takes in through fines. The last time revenue outpaced spending was in 2016.
Some of the blame has been attributed to the high number of unfilled positions in the parking enforcement division.
Beware of Downtown
Car-clogged Downtown is the epicenter of ticketing in Los Angeles. In the period from Jan. 1, 2024–Feb. 28, 2025, the neighborhood generated 221,957 citations—that accounts for 10.3% of all tickets in that time frame. It also is more than the second and third most-cited neighborhoods—Westlake and Koreatown—combined.
But the activity is spread across Los Angeles. During that 14-month period, 31 different communities each registered more than 20,000 citations. A total of 63 neighborhoods produced 10,000 or more tickets. The roster includes Chinatown (13,817 citations), Reseda (12,776) and Pacific Palisades (11,770).
The most frequent violation is parking in a street cleaning zone. Since the start of 2024, 547,463 tickets, or 25.4% of the total, were for that offense, according to LADOT data. It’s a fine of $73.
The next most-common infraction is an expired meter (272,063 tickets, and a $63 fine), followed by parking in a red zone (270,076—$93).
How we did it: We examined publicly available parking citation data from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation from Jan. 1, 2018–Feb. 28, 2025. In making our calculations, we rely on the data the LADOT makes publicly available. LADOT may update past reports with new information, or recategorize past reports. Those revised reports do not always automatically become part of the public database.
Learn more about our data here. Or write to us at askus@xtown.la.
