E-Paper
22-year-old founder of app to avoid parking tickets hailed a hero despite its 4-hour existence
Riley Walz created ‘Find My Parking Cops’ to help the people of San Francisco avoid parking tickets. The city killed it within 4 hours.
Prefer HTon Google
A viral app that helped San Franciscans avoid parking tickets was killed by the city within just four hours of going live. Riley Walz, the 22-year-old creator of the app, said that the city moved at “lightning speed” to kill it.
How did the app work?
Walz created ‘Find My Parking Cops’ to help the people of San Francisco avoid parking tickets.
The app, launched on Tuesday, allowed users to track the location of parking officers in near real-time. It also featured a leaderboard showing which officers had collected the most fines that week. Officer 0336 topped the list with over $15,000, before the app became useless, The San Francisco Standard reported.
How did San Francisco kill the app?
Just four hours after its launch, the city changed its website, removing public access to parking citation data.
Walz posted about the app on X this Tuesday. Four hours later, he posted an update: “In lightning speed, the city changed their site so I can no longer get data. That's probably it.”
What the city said
San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency spokesperson Erica Kato said the city changed its public data feed to ensure the safety of its cops.
“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,” Kato said in an email to The San Francisco Standard. “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.”
App creator praised
Despite its short-lived existence, the Find My Parking Cops app managed to leave a mark. On social media, people hailed its creator.
One X user called Riley Walz “San Francisco's people's princess”.
“Why can’t they just let us have nice things? ou are a genius Riley,” another said.
“They did not want the public to know how much they are stealing from the citizens. Lol. Very impressive work though, Riley,” read one post. Another referred to Walz as a “legend”.
At the same time, the city came under criticism for killing the app. “I’ve never seen the city move that fast to do anything. Anything!” an X user declared. “Wow, government being swift, that’s unusual,” another quipped.
