Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
- Salt Lake City has issued nearly 400,000 parking tickets from 2019 to 2025.
- The tickets have totaled $15.2 million in penalties, with expired meters being the top offense.
- Downtown's growth has increased parking demand and citations; the busiest ticket times were 10 a.m. to noon.
SALT LAKE CITY — In a city with a full-time population of close to 220,000, KSL-TV has learned compliance officers wrote nearly 400,000 parking tickets over a roughly six-year period from 2019 to 2025.
According to an analysis of a massive dataset obtained by KSL-TV, officers wrote 396,345 citations and warnings from Jan. 1, 2019, to June 13, 2025 — including 114,553 for expired meters, and another 46,215 for parking longer than allowed.
Expired registrations and license plate issues accounted for another 44,333 tickets, and the data revealed all the tickets amounted to nearly $15.2 million in assessed penalties.
"When folks park on the street, it needs to be managed," said J.P. Goates, deputy director of Salt Lake City Public Services.
Goates said compliance officers — currently 17 in total — are tasked with policing over 500 miles of streets within city limits.
While part of their "routine" involves proactively checking parking meters and timed parking, Goates said the city's system is primarily complaint-based.
"A lot of complaints might come from no-parking zones where you've got fire lanes, fire hydrants (and) freight-loading," Goates explained.
He said the city had no quotas.
"Our quota is catching every call that comes in to us as quickly as possible," Goates said.
Drivers in downtown Salt Lake City said parking has increasingly become a problem as the city has grown.
"They get into the afternoon hours, it's a fight to find a spot," said Justin Butterfield.
Erhad Mehinovic also noted how difficult finding parking has become all week long.
"Dinner time is impossible," Mehinovic said.
Mehinovic said he received a parking ticket recently, even though he believed he had done everything right.
"I paid, I came back, I had a parking ticket," he said. "So, I'm literally doing a dispute right now."
Some people, including Liberty Wright, said they'd consider not paying for a parking spot on the chance they didn't get caught.
"I think I would take the chance probably, just because you always have the chance to just move your car somewhere else," she said.
Goates acknowledged the rapid growth has likely contributed to a variety of tickets being written downtown.
"A lot of these new developments have less parking than they've had in the past traditionally; sometimes (that) pushes cars out onto the street," Goates said. "A denser downtown, more parking is creating a higher demand, and we end up issuing more citations as a result in a smaller area."
The data showed the most ticketed streets all crossed through Salt Lake City's downtown. 300 South, with metered parking in the middle of the road, saw the most tickets with 29,918. All major streets from 300 South to 100 South, and from West Temple to State Street, were near the top of the list.
"During peak hours, it's important for those to turn over," Goates said.
The data showed the time of day when the most tickets were written was between 10 a.m. and noon with 75,297, followed closely by 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. with 71,673.
More tickets were written on Tuesday (83,958) and on Thursday (80,858) than on other days of the week, according to the data.
Not every ticket that was written resulted in an assessed penalty, with 44,488 warnings included in the data set.
Expired meters topped the list in assessed penalties with $3,995,137, followed by registration/plates with $1,834,215 and no parking with $1,795,770.
ADA parking violations, with only 6,374 citations written at a state-mandated $340 per, ranked No. 4 in assessed penalties in the dataset at $1,482,780.
KSL-TV initially requested the citywide data set after a story in March found ADA stalls at 455 West and 200 North generated more than $33,000 in assessed penalties between Jan. 2 and March 3.
"It's unsafe, and those are there for a reason — for the folks that need them," Goates said. "When you see the numbers growing in certain areas, like ADA citations or blocked driveways, it's because those are the most frequent things that are giving the community problems."
Goates said outside of the ADA penalties, Salt Lake City regularly researches parking ticket fines in cities of comparable size to ensure competitive fees.
He said compliance officers find themselves at risk of conflict due to the tickets they write, but they're simply out there performing a needed service.
"Our officers are out there, they're exposed and wewould just ask that people look out for them," Goates said. "It really does benefit the public what they're doing."
