Terms & Data Notes
What CurbWatch LA knows, how it knows it, and where its limits are.
The posted sign is the authority. This map is not. Use it to plan, then read the curb. If the two disagree, the sign wins, and a parking officer will agree with the sign. Please report it to us!
What this is
A free, independent map of street-parking rules and enforcement for part of Los Angeles, built from public records. It covers the City of Los Angeles and West Hollywood. Beverly Hills falls inside the map's frame but outside its coverage; it doesn't publish this data, so the map says so rather than guessing. It isn't affiliated with, endorsed by, or run by the City of Los Angeles, LADOT, the City of West Hollywood, or any other agency or company. We are a very small team behind this project.
Where the data comes from
- City of Los Angeles — posted street-sweeping routes, street centerlines, metered parking inventory and live meter occupancy, city-owned lots, and parking citations.
- City of West Hollywood — permit blocks and their posted hours, permit districts, sweeping routes, and public parking.
- County of Los Angeles — address points and city boundaries.
- OpenStreetMap — streets, parks, off-street lots, and plate-reader camera locations. © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. Those parts of the data file are a derivative database and stay under that license — see DATA-LICENSE.md.
- Dodger Stadium home dates — kept by hand from the published schedule.
It is a snapshot
The map carries a build date and the date its ticket records run through. Nothing updates by itself between builds. Things change. An old snapshot stays confidently wrong, which is why the date is on the screen and we will do our best to keep this updated frequently.
Some of it is inferred, not official
Los Angeles hasn't published a permit-district map since 2015, and that map no longer matches the street. So some permit streets here are worked out from where permit tickets were actually written, and the Dodger Stadium game-day zone is assembled the same way, from ticket patterns and local knowledge. These are this project's inferences, labeled as such. They can be wrong in both directions: a permit street nobody has ticketed yet looks identical to a free one.
Silence isn't safety
About a fifth of the blocks here have no records at all. No sweeping route, no meter, no permit ticket, and no citation. The app says so plainly on those blocks rather than calling them clear, because the city not having published something is not the same as the curb being free. Another one in twelve has tickets but no rule we can point to, which usually means a sign exists that the city's own map doesn't carry. Again, please report these to us so we can keep them updated!
Even the mapped rules have soft edges: LA's sweeping routes were digitized from paper maps and the source itself calls them a visual reference, with segments that can be missing or extraneous.
What it can't see at all
No dataset covers red curbs, hydrants, driveways, loading zones, temporary no-parking signs for filming or construction, valet hours, or a sweeper that didn't show up. Ticket history describes only the past.
No warranty
This is provided as is, without warranty of any kind. Parking decisions are yours, and so are any citations, tows or fees that follow. Nothing here is legal advice. If you're contesting a citation, LADOT's Initial Review process and the posted signage are what matter.
Privacy
No accounts, no tracking, no analytics, no advertising, no cookies. Nothing you search or click is sent anywhere or recorded. Your chosen light or dark theme is stored in your own browser and never leaves it. We care about your privacy, a lot.
Everything the page needs — the map library and the data — is served from this site, so no third party sees you visit. The one outside request goes to the City of Los Angeles' public meter-occupancy feed, so open spaces show current readings; it comes from your browser and carries nothing about you beyond what any web request carries. If it fails, the map falls back to the readings in the snapshot.
The citation data behind this map is aggregated by block before publishing. It contains no license plates, vehicle details, ticket numbers or anything identifying a person — only counts, violation types, times and fine amounts.
Plate-reader cameras
Camera locations come from OpenStreetMap, mapped by volunteers, the same public data DeFlock displays. Coverage is incomplete, and a camera's absence here means nobody has mapped it, not that it isn't there. Manufacturer names are shown to describe the hardware, nothing more.
Corrections
Found a block that's wrong? The gap between what's published and what's on the curb is the whole point of this project. Please reach out to hello@curbwatch.la with the street, the block, and what the sign actually says. Thank you!