An app that helped San Francisco drivers avoid parking tickets for a single morning has been dismantled, but not before making a giant splash.
Developed by software engineer Riley Walz, the Find My Parking Cops app provided users with a city map containing real-time information about the location of parking control attendants. As Wired explains, “Walz’s website looked quite similar to Apple’s Find My feature, a tool sometimes used by iOS owners to track the location of family and friends. But rather than people you know IRL, this site showed the trail of tickets issued by parking enforcers as they zipped around San Francisco in their tiny single-seaters.”
It was sheer prowess that led Walz to develop the technology. After looking at some parking tickets, he noticed a pattern in how citation numbers were being generated. He then used reverse-engineering to map tickets in real time, effectively tracing the routes of parking enforcement.
The app debuted Tuesday and immediately went viral. But nothing lasts forever. Within hours, the real-time data feed that powered the site was cut, rendering the map useless. Shortly after, it was taken offline.
“Citations are a tool to ensure compliance with parking laws, which help keep our streets safe and use our limited curb space efficiently and fairly,” a representative from the San Francisco Metropolitan Transit Authority told Wired. “We 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.”
The app lived a brief life, but its impact will not soon be forgotten.