A SoMa resident reserved a moving-day loading zone with an official SFMTA permit, posted the signs, and still found the space blocked. The incident surfaces a concrete gap: the permit system's fees are well-documented, but enforcement data is nowhere on SFMTA's public website.

The yellow signs went up 72 hours before moving day, just as the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency requires. A resident of a South of Market high-rise had done everything right — applied in advance, paid the fee, posted the bright temporary no-parking placards to reserve a stretch of curb for an interstate move to Texas — and then, on the morning of the move, a Tesla sat parked squarely in the designated loading zone. The incident, recounted on Reddit, is a common enough frustration. It also points at a specific and documentable gap between what an SFMTA Temporary Tow-Away No Stopping permit promises and what actually happens at the curb.

The agency offers two main pathways for securing a permitted loading zone. Residents and small movers filing through SFMTA's online portal or 311 — for short-term permits of up to three days — pay $355 for 1–4 signs under the current FY 2026–2027 fee schedule, effective July 1, 2026. File four to seven days out rather than further in advance and a $64 surcharge is added. A separate pathway — the ISCOTT process, for applications submitted 14 or more days before the event — charges $357 for the same 1–4 sign package. Both require the yellow signs posted at least 72 hours before enforcement on unmetered streets. Miss the 14-day ISCOTT window and file late: a $140 surcharge lands on top of the base fee. All figures are from SFMTA's posted FY 2026–2027 fee schedule at sfmta.com/permits/temporary-signage.

SFMTA is explicit about what the permits are not for. "Temporary TANS signs are not to be used to provide or reserve on-street parking for personal vehicles," the agency states on its permit page. "SFMTA policies do not support privatization of parking spaces." The intended uses — a moving truck, a construction staging zone, a brief utility access — are clearly defined. The enforcement of that intent is where the system gets murky.

How often vehicles are actually towed or cited from permitted zones is not something SFMTA makes available on its public-facing website. No breakdown of permit volumes by neighborhood appears there either, leaving residents no straightforward way to gauge how reliably the system works in practice before they commit to a date and a fee.

South of Market generates a lot of municipal friction against which that question sits. DataSF's open 311 service request dataset recorded 876 service requests from the neighborhood in the last seven days — encampment reports, illegal-dumping calls, the full catalog of urban conditions. The city's eviction filings dataset shows 31 eviction notices filed in South of Market over the past 90 days, with recent filings at the 1000 block of Mission Street and the 100 block of Ninth Street. That level of residential churn means moves are happening constantly, all competing for the same sidewalks and loading zones.

Tomorrow morning, the yellow signs will go up on another SoMa block. Whether the curb is actually clear when the truck arrives is a different question — one the city doesn't yet answer in public.