Parking, towing and the auction

It is the closing block of Chapter VI of Act 22-2000: where you may and may not park, how the car must be left, when an officer may move or take it, what it costs to recover it from the pound, and what happens if nobody claims it.

It applies to every vehicle parked on Puerto Rico’s public roads. Exempt from this chapter’s stopping and parking rules are public-service agency or company vehicles — except transport agency vehicles — when in emergency operations to fix breaks, faults or interruptions to their services, and only for strictly the time necessary. The exception in subsection (a)(22) covers persons without movement in both legs or missing both legs who hold the special driving licence under Article 3.12.

• To recover a removed vehicle: adequate identification of the owner, person in charge or certified driver, plus payment of fifty-five (55) dollars for deposit and custody and fifty-five (55) dollars for the towing service (Article 6.28(b)).Verified against the official source
• The parking penalties under Articles 6.19, 6.21 and 6.22, the Secretary’s regulations and municipal ordinances are effective only where adequate signs and markings are placed and kept at the corresponding places (Article 6.26).Verified against the official source

• Adequate identification of the vehicle’s owner, person in charge or certified driver, which Article 6.28(b) requires before allowing it to be taken from the pound.

1. 1

   Step 1: The first ten prohibited places

   Article 6.19(a) prohibits stopping, standing or parking, save in extraordinary situations to avoid traffic conflicts or on the specific direction of a police officer, a traffic light or a sign: (1) on a sidewalk; (2) within the area formed by the crossing of streets or roads; (3) on a pedestrian crossing; (4) within sixteen point four feet or five metres of a corner, measured from the building line; (5) within sixteen point four feet of the nearest rail on a train line; (6) parallel to or opposite an excavation or obstruction where it could interrupt traffic; (7) parallel or adjacent to an already parked vehicle, which is double parking; (8) on a bridge, elevated structure or tunnel; (9) more than one foot or thirty point five centimetres from the sidewalk edge; and (10) on islands, traffic channelisers and planting areas adjoining sidewalks.

2. 2

   Step 2: The hydrant, the fire station and the garage

   Subsections (11) to (14) follow. You do not park within sixteen point four feet or five metres of a fire hydrant. Nor in front of a fire station, including the front and the opposite side of the road, the width of the station entrances “plus twenty (20) feet or six point zero ninety-six (6.096) metres more on both sides of those entrances”. Nor within three feet or ninety-one point four centimetres of any garage entrance or exit, where the road is so narrow that it obstructs entering or leaving — though this does not cover an owner parking in their own residence’s garage entrance, if no law, regulation or municipal ordinance prohibits it on that side at that hour. Nor in front of the entrance to a religious temple, public or private educational institution, cinema, theatre, banking institution, parking or petrol-selling area, or where public acts are held.

3. 3

   Step 3: The bus stop, the traffic light and doing business in the street

   Subsection (15) prohibits parking at duly marked, painted or signed bus stops, “extending five metres before and after those places”. (16) prohibits it within sixteen point four feet before and after a fixed-time or flashing traffic light, a stop sign or a yield sign, measured from the kerb or shoulder edge. And (17) prohibits parking on any public road where that results in using the road for the business of selling, advertising, demonstrating or leasing vehicles or any merchandise, or for the purpose of washing, cleaning, greasing or repairing the vehicle, “except an emergency repair”.

4. 4

   Step 4: The Capitol, private car parks and the three feet

   Subsection (18) prohibits parking on the grounds of the Capitol of Puerto Rico save under the regulations the Legislative Assembly establishes, and allows the House and Senate to waive the adjoining grounds by concurrent resolution during their working hours. (19) prohibits parking in private buildings’ parking areas duly identified by legible notices for the private or exclusive use of their occupants: only the persons named in the notices or someone with their consent may park there. (20) prohibits parking within three feet or ninety-one point four centimetres of any other parked vehicle, unless the Secretary authorises otherwise. And (21) closes with the obvious: anywhere parking is prohibited by official signs.

5. 5

   Step 5: The disability ramp and the electric charging point

   The last two subsections are the most recent in spirit. (23) prohibits parking “so as to obstruct a pedestrian facility for persons with physical disabilities, whether pedestrian ways or platforms, as those terms are defined in Chapter I of this Act” — a chapter we did not read, so we do not publish those definitions. (24) prohibits parking in a space serving as a charging point for mainly electric vehicles, “unless the vehicle parked there is connected and using the charging device”; it does not apply to someone parking at a charging point they own. (22), for its part, excepts from the prohibition on signed places lacking disabled parking those without movement in both legs or missing both legs who hold the special licence under Article 3.12 — but not even that exception allows parking on toll motorways, expressways, reversible lanes, or the busiest roads where other nearby authorised places exist.

6. 6

   Step 6: A hundred and fifty, two hundred and five hundred

   Article 6.19 closes with three tiers of fine. The general rule: an administrative offence with a hundred and fifty dollar fine. It rises to two hundred dollars in five specific cases: (a)(1), the sidewalk; (a)(10), the islands and planting areas; (a)(11), the fire hydrant; (a)(12), the fire station; and (a)(15), the bus stop. And it reaches five hundred dollars for breaching (a)(23), obstructing a pedestrian facility for persons with disabilities. It is the highest fine in the parking chapter.

7. 7

   Step 7: The rural zone, the loading zone and hazardous material

   Subsection (b) prohibits stopping or parking, with or without occupants, on the pavement of a road in a rural zone where it is possible to do so off the roadway; enough space must always be left on the opposite side, and the vehicle must be visible from two hundred feet or sixty point ninety-six metres in both directions. Subsection (c) limits loading zones to that purpose alone, and never for more than one hour during working hours and days. Subsections (d) and (e) deal with vehicles carrying explosive and hazardous material: neither may park within five feet of the travelled portion of the road, and the explosive one may not park on private property without the knowledge and consent of the person in charge, nor within three hundred feet of a bridge, tunnel, building or place where people work or gather, save for brief periods where the operation requires it and it is impossible or impractical to park elsewhere.

8. 8

   Step 8: If your car breaks down you have one hour

   Article 6.19 sets its own exception before the fines: it does not apply to the driver of a vehicle that breaks down and must be repaired on the pavement of a shoulderless road, “provided the operation can be done within one (1) hour and the vehicle is not on a bridge, elevated structure, tunnel or intersection, in which case it must be removed immediately”. One hour, and not on a bridge or at an intersection.

9. 9

   Step 9: How the car must be left

   Four short articles complete the picture. 6.20 prohibits parking at night on an unlit road with the parking and rear lights switched off: fifty dollars. 6.21 requires parking to the right, parallel to the edge, with the wheels no more than twelve inches from the kerb, and passengers always getting in and out on the kerb side: fifty dollars. 6.22 refers to whatever form of parking the competent authorities authorise where it is not parallel: fifty dollars. 6.23 prohibits stopping, standing, parking or abandoning a vehicle so as to hinder or obstruct traffic: a hundred dollars. And 6.24, which sets no fine, requires every parked vehicle to be immobilised with the emergency brake, the front wheel nearest the sidewalk turned toward the kerb when parked on a gradient, and in all cases the engine switched off and the ignition key removed.

10. 10

    Step 10: When an officer may take your car away

    Article 6.27 draws two distinctions. Where an officer finds a vehicle parked in the situations under subsections (b) and (c) of Article 6.19 — the rural zone and the loading zone — the officer is authorised to move it or to require the driver to move it off the pavement or the busiest part of the road. And every officer is authorised to remove it, following the procedure in Article 6.28, where the person in charge of the vehicle cannot assume custody or remove it, or where whoever was driving or in control of it is arrested for an alleged offence that by law requires taking the arrested person before a magistrate without unnecessary delay.

11. 11

    Step 11: Fifty-five plus fifty-five

    Article 6.28, amended by Act 58-2024, sets the procedure and the numbers. First, the Police or Municipal Police will make reasonable efforts in the immediate area to locate the driver and get them to move it. If they cannot find them, or the driver is prevented from driving or refuses, they may remove it with cranes or other mechanical devices, including cranes authorised by the Commission. The vehicle is taken with all precautions against damage, to a place in the municipality where the removal happened destined for that purpose. And it stays in custody until payment of fifty-five dollars for deposit and custody to the municipality or the Police, plus fifty-five dollars more for the towing service, upon adequate identification. Paying does not erase the ticket: the Act makes clear this does not prevent the driver or owner being charged with the parking violation.

12. 12

    Step 12: Fifteen dollars a day, up to four hundred

    Subsection (c) is the one that piles up on people. For each day after the first forty-eight hours that the owner, person in charge or certified driver delays in requesting delivery, fifteen dollars are charged as a surcharge, “up to a maximum of four hundred (400) dollars”. The Secretary may reach a payment-plan agreement as provided by regulation — a regulation we did not read. If the vehicle is in a municipal facility, payment is made to the municipality. And there is an exemption: motor vehicles stolen and abandoned by those who committed the theft are exempt from deposit, custody, surcharge and towing for a period of ten days after their owner, certified driver or whoever appears as owner in the Department’s register has been reliably notified.

13. 13

    Step 13: Twenty-four hours to notify you, sixty days to claim

    Subsection (e) requires the Police to notify the owner of every removed vehicle within twenty-four hours of the removal, at the address in the Department’s records, warning that if delivery is not claimed “within the non-extendable term of sixty (60) days from the notification date”, the vehicle may be sold at public auction to satisfy all the expenses. Vehicles that by their condition cannot be sold at auction may be confiscated and disposed of as the municipality or the Police see fit. The term is non-extendable: the Act uses that word.

14. 14

    Step 14: The auction, and where the surplus goes

    Once the sixty-day term expires unclaimed, the municipality or the Police sell the vehicle at public auction. The notice is published in a newspaper of general circulation in Puerto Rico “sixty (60) days before it is held”, and must state the vehicle’s make and year of manufacture, the plate number if any, and the owner’s name per the Department’s records. Towing, deposit, custody, surcharge and auction expenses are paid from the sale proceeds. Any surplus goes into the ordinary fund of the municipality concerned, or into the General Fund of the Government of Puerto Rico if the Police held the auction. Subsection (j) closes the article with something worth knowing: every person driving a vehicle and every owner of a vehicle authorised to travel the public roads is deemed to have “given their consent” for the Police or the Municipal Police to remove their vehicle in the cases and ways this Article provides.

The removed vehicle stays in the custody of the municipality where the removal occurred or of the Police of Puerto Rico, at the place that municipality has destined for the purpose; that is where you pay and claim it. If it is in a municipal facility, payment is made to the municipality. The Act does not publish a list of those pounds, so you have to ask the Municipal Police of the municipality where the vehicle was parked or the Police of Puerto Rico, depending on who removed it. The auction notice is published in a newspaper of general circulation in Puerto Rico.

• Believing parking on the sidewalk carries the same fine as parking badly anywhere else: the sidewalk is one of the five two-hundred-dollar cases.
• Forgetting the other four two-hundred-dollar cases: the islands and planting areas, the fire hydrant, the fire station and the bus stop.
• Parking at an electric charging point “just for a moment” without plugging in: subsection (a)(24) requires the vehicle to be connected and using the charging device.
• Blocking a ramp or pedestrian facility for persons with disabilities: that is subsection (a)(23), and it is five hundred dollars, the chapter’s highest fine.
• Measuring the five metres from the corner starting at the kerb: subsection (a)(4) measures them from the building line.
• Parking alongside another parked car: double parking is subsection (a)(7), and within three feet of another vehicle is (a)(20).
• Washing or repairing the car in the street: subsection (a)(17) prohibits it except for an emergency repair.
• Leaving the car at the pound “a few days” while finding the money: the fifteen-dollar daily surcharge starts after the first forty-eight hours and can reach four hundred.
• Thinking paying the tow erases the ticket: Article 6.28(b) says expressly that payment does not prevent the parking violation being charged.
• Counting the sixty days from when the car was taken: the non-extendable term runs from the date of notification to the owner.
• Having an out-of-date address in the Department’s registry: the twenty-four-hour notice goes to the address recorded there.
• Leaving the car parked on a gradient without turning the wheel toward the kerb and without removing the key: that is what Article 6.24 requires.

These are the government pages this guide is based on.

• Departamento de Transportación y Obras Públicas (DTOP)

  DTOP

  bvirtualogp.pr.gov