Denver officially brings back online parking ticket disputes after year of backlash
Sep 14, 2026, 3:52 PM | Updated: Sep 15, 2026, 1:06 pm
If you’ve been sitting on a Denver parking ticket for the last year, muttering “I’ll deal with this when I can do it online,” today’s your day. As of Monday, September 14, the city has officially relaunched its online parking ticket dispute system, ending a year-long stretch where your only option for fighting a ticket was showing up in person at the City and County Building and waiting for a hearing.
Here’s the backstory: Denver County Court laid off all of its parking magistrates in August 2025 as part of city budget cuts, which killed the online dispute portal overnight. The result was predictable. The share of drivers who actually bothered to dispute their tickets plummeted from 12 percent to just 1 percent. People who believed they were wrongly ticketed, including one woman who told Denver7 she had to drive downtown while pregnant just to schedule a hearing that was months away, were essentially stuck paying up or burning a day in court.
The new system works a little differently than the old one. Instead of parking magistrates through the county court, Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure will now review disputes filed online. A few things to know: your ticket has to be fewer than 20 days old to qualify, meaning only citations issued on or after August 25 are eligible for the online process right now. Anything older than that still has to go the in-person route. And if you disagree with DOTI’s decision, you can still request a traditional in-person hearing after that.
There is one cloud hanging over this: two Denver City Council members have raised concerns about how the new system is being funded, arguing the money is coming from a parking meter fund that was meant for road safety, not parking disputes. If the council restricts that funding, the portal’s long-term future could be in jeopardy. But for now, it’s live. Head to denvergov.org/parking, upload your documentation, and let DOTI know why that ticket was bogus.
