Toronto parking tickets, 2008 to 2025

Across the full 2008 to 2025 record, the busiest hour for tickets was noon to 1 p.m., with 3,070,113 tickets, or 7.5% of all tickets with a valid time. The late morning and early afternoon hours, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., made up most of the weekday total. Activity fell sharply before dawn: the 5 a.m. hour had only 326,322 tickets, or 0.8%. A second, smaller rise appeared overnight, with 1,803,912 tickets in the midnight hour.

Tuesday through Friday each had about 15.5% to 15.8% of tickets. Saturday had 13.2% and Sunday 10.3%, the quietest day. Months were more even. October had the most tickets (8.9%), while February (7.4%) and December (7.5%) had the fewest, partly because February is shorter.

Weekdays and weekends follow different patterns. On weekdays, 54.4% of tickets were issued between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., and noon was the peak hour at 8.3%. On weekends, that daytime share drops to 36.2%, and 29.2% of tickets came between midnight and 5 a.m. The midnight hour alone made up 8.1% of weekend tickets. Overnight tickets were mostly permit parking (40.9%) and private property (27.7%). That fits overnight permit-parking rules on residential streets.

These patterns show when enforcement happens, not when people park or break the rules most. Shift schedules, patrol plans and the hours that rules apply all shape the counts, and enforcement is not spread evenly across the day or week. A quiet hour does not mean parking rules are not enforced then.

From 2008 to 2025 the corpus holds 41,040,491 tickets with $1,983,578,735 in set fines. One code stands out: parking on a signed street during prohibited days or times, with 7,308,759 tickets (17.8% of the total). Next come parking on private property at 15.7% and parking in a permit zone without a permit at 15.0%. Grouped into families, signed no-parking leads with 21.5% of tickets, followed by unpaid meter and pay-and-display tickets at 18.7%.

Most set fines are small. The median and the most common amount are both $30, the average is $48.33, and 78.8% of tickets carry a fine of $50 or less. Only 8.9% are $100 or more. The higher fines are concentrated in a few families. Hydrant, fire-route, accessible-space, sidewalk and bike-lane infractions make up just 4.7% of tickets but 16.0% of set-fine dollars, averaging $166.29. No-stopping and rush-hour tickets average $84.63 and account for 22.9% of fine dollars, the largest share of any family. Parking in a fire route has an average of $250, and rush-hour stopping averages $159.48.

By total set fines, the signed no-parking code is again first at $324,402,825, mostly because it is so common rather than because its fine is high. Rush-hour stopping shows the opposite pattern: 695,387 tickets came to $110,897,410. These totals add up the fines set in the by-law. They are not the amounts actually paid or collected.

Public-street tickets make up 83.3% of the corpus, and private-property tickets (codes for private and municipal lots) make up 16.7%, or 6,846,878 tickets. Private-property tickets are cheaper on average, at $35.78 compared with $50.85 on public streets. The public-street figure is pulled up by the higher stopping, hydrant and fire-route fines. Ticket counts measure enforcement activity, not how often people park or break the rules, and enforcement is not spread evenly across infraction types or places.

Across 2008 to 2025, 38,943,724 tickets could be matched to a block of the City's street centreline. They fall on 38,513 different blocks, but they are far from evenly spread. The busiest 1% of those blocks, 386 in all, account for 28.0% of matched tickets. The busiest tenth account for 76.6%, and the busier half accounts for 98.4%. A typical ticketed block (the median) collected only about 106 tickets over the whole period.

The block with the most tickets is Keele St between The Pond Rd and York Blvd, with 149,472.5. Next is Bayview Ave at Blythwood Rd, with 136,770. On both, nearly all tickets were private-property infractions (97.9% and 99.9%), which means tickets issued in private or municipal lots that were geocoded to the nearby street. The same is true of Finch Ave E between Seneca Hill Dr and the 404 ramp (99.0%). These blocks show up mainly because large parking lots sit on them, not because of on-street parking.

On public streets, the leaders are in the core and midtown. Edward St between Yonge St and Bay St had 131,247 tickets, Queen St W between Peter St and Spadina Ave had 92,577.5, and Yorkville Ave between Bellair St and Hazelton Ave had 89,883.5. Bayview Ave between Belsize Dr and Manor Rd E (75,636.5), University Ave between Armoury St and Dundas St W (70,514.5), Cumberland St at Bellair St (68,421.5) and Elm St near Bay St (67,468) round out the top ten.

These counts measure where enforcement happened, not how often people park or break the rules at a given spot. Enforcement is not spread evenly across the city, and a busy block may simply get patrolled more often. Totals cover only the complete records the City publishes.

The corpus has 2,213,939 tickets for 2019. That fell to 1,403,663 in 2020, a drop of 36.6%. In 2021 there were 1,481,709 tickets, still 33.1% below 2019. The count rose to 1,821,887 in 2022 and reached 2,256,360 in 2023, which is 1.9% above 2019. The City publishes complete records only, so these totals leave out some tickets, such as many with out-of-province plates. The City says this has little effect on trends.

The months show the drop most clearly. In April 2020 there were only 17,979 tickets, compared with 188,258 in April 2019. Counts recovered over the summer and fall of 2020. They fell again in early 2021 to 55,140 in January, and only returned to the usual range from mid-2021 onward. These counts reflect enforcement activity, which changed during this time. They do not show how much people parked or how often rules were broken.

The mix of infractions also changed. Tickets on private and municipal lots made up 21.6% of tickets in 2019 and 26.9% in 2020, then eased back to 21.5% by 2023. No-stopping tickets fell from 13.0% to 11.3% of the total in 2020. Hydrant, fire-route, accessible-space, sidewalk and bike-lane infractions rose to 6.1% in 2021, up from about 4% in the other years. Meter tickets rose to 19.0% in 2022, compared with 14.5% in 2019.

The time of day hardly changed. Tickets written between midnight and 6 a.m. made up 21.3% of 2019 tickets with a valid time, and 22.6% in 2020. Weekend tickets slipped slightly, from 22.4% to 21.6%. Enforcement is not spread evenly across hours or places, so these shares show when tickets were written, not when parking was more or less of a problem.

The average set fine on a Toronto parking ticket was $54.25 in 2023, $67.99 in 2024 and $80.30 in 2025. The median fine rose from $30 to $50 and then to $65. Ticket counts went the other way: from 2,256,360 in 2023 to 2,147,159 in 2024 and 2,051,175 in 2025. The total value of set fines still grew, from $122,409,230 in 2023 to $145,978,460 in 2024 and $164,705,020 in 2025. The City publishes complete records only, so these totals leave out some tickets, such as many issued to out-of-province plates.

The first increase applied to private and municipal property. For parking on private property (code 3) and on municipal property (code 4), the typical fine went from $30 to $75. The ticket data show the new amount starting in December 2023. Code 3 tickets fell from 435,620 in 2023 to 365,060 in 2024, a 16.2% drop, and then rose to 387,901 in 2025. Code 4 tickets fell 5.2%. A few small codes also changed their typical fine between 2023 and 2024. For example, commercial loading-zone code 414 went from $40 to $50, and its ticket count rose 41.2%, from 745 to 1,052.

The second increase hit public streets in the middle of 2024. In July the average street fine was $61.69. In August it was $77.84. Meter tickets (code 207) went from $30 to $50, signed no-parking tickets (code 5) from $50 to $65, and signed no-stopping tickets (code 9) from $100 to $120. Because the first seven months of 2024 still used the old amounts, the most common fine for these codes for the year as a whole stays at the 2023 level. The full-year change only appears in 2025. Hydrant, fire-route, accessible-space, sidewalk and bike-lane infractions went up as well: the typical fine for parking within three metres of a hydrant rose from $100 to $125.

Street ticket volume changed around the same time. From January to July 2024 there were 15.2% more public-street tickets than in the same months of 2023. From August to December there were 22.3% fewer. Ticket counts measure enforcement activity, and enforcement is not spread evenly over time or place. So these numbers do not show whether higher fines changed how people park.

From 2008 to 2025, Yonge Street was assigned about 1,055,746 of the 41,040,491 tickets in the corpus, or 2.6% of all of them. Next came Bloor Street West with 762,750, Queen Street West with 718,838 and Danforth Avenue with 692,583. These are long streets lined with shops, so they have a lot of kerb to enforce. Ticket counts show where enforcement happened, not how often people park or break the rules, and enforcement is not spread evenly across the city.

Yonge Street was the top street in every year but two. Bloor Street West took first place in 2009 and Queen Street West did so in 2022. Through the early 2010s, Bloor Street West and Danforth Avenue usually held second and third place. From 2017 on, Queen Street West was nearly always in the top three. Yonge's own yearly count fell from 85,365 in 2008 to 53,493 in 2025. Totals are lower in 2020 and 2021 across the city. When comparing years, keep in mind that the City publishes complete records only.

The biggest change is Keele Street. It ranked 173rd in 2008 and stayed well outside the top 20 until 2019, when it reached 25th. It then climbed to third in 2022 with 26,249 tickets and to second in 2025 with 35,515. Private-property tickets, issued in private and municipal lots rather than on the street, make up 87.7% of Keele's tickets. That suggests the jump comes from enforcement at off-street lots near the street, not from street parking.

On the traditional shopping streets, unpaid meters and pay-and-display are the main type of infraction: 57.9% of tickets on Danforth Avenue, 48.2% on Bloor Street West and 44.6% on Queen Street West. Yonge Street has a more even mix: no parking during signed hours (26.7%), unpaid meters (25.7%) and no stopping or rush-hour rules (24.1%).