Where the Tickets are Thickest and Other Parking Violation Fun

City of Houston parking ticket map by Jordan Poles

The above heatmap showing where city parking tickets are most frequently issued is one result of an in-progress project by biology major and urban data enthusiast Jordan Poles. Areas shaded red mark where the tickets fall heaviest, while green areas see a lighter citation rain. Grey areas are not ticket-free — rather, the colored regions represent notable clusters of ticket activity (including Downtown, Montrose, Fourth Ward, Midtown, the Museum District, and the Rice Village).

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Poles has been digging into the numbers with help from the civic-minded programming meetup group SketchCity. The work includes a look at which vehicle makes and years are ticketed most frequently; Poles has also mapped where certain specific parking citation types are most frequently issued.

The data mapped above comes from a city dataset of GPS-tracked tickets issued between July 2014 and March 2016 (with a few gaps). Other parts of Poles’s project uses additional city ticket data from as early as 2012. More maps, interesting correlations, and a boatload of technical details can be found on Poles’s report page for the project.

Image: Jordan Poles

Fine Maps

5 Comment

  • Why can’t we comment on the Sponsor of The Day articles? There’s an excellent Naked Gun joke in there somewhere in today’s sponsor’s name.

  • Commonsense, I doubt that Swamplot is looking for jokes related to its sponsors!

    I find it a sign of our times that someone actually burned up brain cells to put this kind of report together. Where are the most “expired parking meter” tickets written?? Surprise, it’s where the parking meters are!

    I could go on, but then I would be burning my brain cells.

  • Another fee producing scheme by the COH !!

  • I see violations in the Greater Heights Area all the time.
    Where are the police? In Montrose you will get a ticket in a matter of minutes.

  • Interesting that so many tickets are issued in areas that have neither parking meters nor resident-only parking.