Should you risk it? Pick a street, pick how you're parking, pick how long. We'll calculate the real odds of a ticket — then check if the garage down the block is actually cheaper.
🔗 Live site: [coming soon]
A free, public tool that helps NYC drivers make smarter parking decisions using real enforcement data. Built by Brad Olack.
- Interactive heat map — ticket density across all 5 NYC boroughs with clickable neighborhood zones
- Street vs. Garage calculator — 52 calibrated streets across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island
- Click-to-pick — click anywhere on the map to drop a pin and run the calculator for that exact spot
- Probability model v3 — enforcer-aware risk patterns (ALPR cars, TEAs on foot, citizen reports via 311)
- Time-of-day modifiers — enforcement is bursty, not constant; the model reflects that
- Fine schedule search — every common NYC parking violation and what it costs
- Plate lookup — check open violations against any plate via NYC Department of Finance
- Full methodology section — transparent math, honest caveats
P(ticket) = 1 − ∏(1 − pᵢ)
Where each hourly risk pᵢ is:
pᵢ = (block_heat / 100) × strategy_multiplier × time_of_day_modifier × decay(hour, enforcer_type)
Three enforcer-specific decay patterns:
- ALPR vehicles — front-loaded, 45% decay per hour (sweep then leave)
- TEAs on foot — slower decay, 25% per hour (1–2 passes per shift)
- Citizen reports (311) — no decay (someone's always watching)
ASP (alternate-side) is modeled separately as a binary cleaning-window event (78–93% probability).
Full methodology is documented in Section V of the site.
- NYC Open Data — Open Parking and Camera Violations (SOQL API)
- NYC Department of Finance — violation codes and fine schedules
- NYPD precinct-level ticket totals (annual reports)
- NYC DOT — ASP schedules, ParkNYC block-face data
- SpotAngels — ticket density studies
- Parkopedia — garage rate samples
Single HTML file. No build step, no backend, no dependencies beyond CDN-loaded Leaflet.
- Leaflet.js + Leaflet.heat — interactive map and heatmap
- CARTO Dark Matter — basemap tiles (free, keyless)
- Vanilla JavaScript — calculator, click-to-pick, borough switching
- Google Fonts — DM Serif Display + JetBrains Mono
| Phase | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Static prototype | ✅ Done | Heat map + calculator + fine lookup |
| 2. Live NYC Open Data | 🔲 Next | Query violations API on page load for real-time density |
| 3. Address autocomplete | 🔲 Planned | Geocode typed addresses via Mapbox or Nominatim |
| 4. Plate alerts | 🔲 Planned | Email/SMS when a new ticket posts to your plate |
| 5. Fleet API | 🔲 Planned | Commercial plate-watch endpoints for delivery fleets |
It's one HTML file. Open it in a browser:
open index.htmlOr serve it locally:
npx serve .Drag index.html to any static host:
MIT
Not affiliated with the City of New York. Probability estimates are illustrative, derived from public data. See the methodology section on the site for full details.