SAN ANTONIO – They’ve become a joke for influencers on TikTok: abandoned cars at the airport parking garage that have been gathering dust and inscriptions for months.<\/p>\n
But travelers searching for places to park aren’t laughing.<\/p>\n
The News 4 I-Team’s Jaie Avila went to airport officials with the questions you want answered: what’s being done about abandoned cars taking up parking spaces? And how much is it costing us to remove them?<\/p>\n
After seeing those posts we went to the long term parking garage at the airport and found several cars covered in dust, often vandalized, which appeared to have been there for months.<\/p>\n
The cars had been sitting in the garage so long tires had gone flat and one had a broken window. Airport visitors started scrawling dates in the dust, in a couple of cases going back to 2023.<\/p>\n
Along with messages: “u okay dude?”, “Hope you make it back”, and “Hello from Cleveland”.<\/p>\n
Scrawled on one car\u2019s windshield was the message: \u201cBut vets have to pay to park\u201d.<\/p>\n
A reference to a change last month when the airport started charging some veterans to park when before they parked for free.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s been times I\u2019ve had to cruise around in here 45 minutes just to find a parking space,” said Marine and Air Force veteran Ray Lorence.<\/p>\n
Lorence was not happy to hear abandoned cars are taking up spots that could be freed up for veterans and older travelers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they’re like that, that’s an automatic tow, get them up out of here, do what you’ve got to do with them,” Lorence said.<\/p>\n
The News 4 I-Team asked airport officials how abandoned vehicles could sit in the garage for months despite a policy that limits parking here to 30 days.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have the systems in place to see how long cars have been there,” said Airport Deputy Director Sam Rodriguez.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese cars were obviously there much longer than 30 days how do you explain that?\u201d asked News 4 I-Team Reporter Jaie Avila.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it comes down to enforcement, resources and of course the customer service aspect of it. We’ve started to remove some of those vehicles,” Rodriguez said.<\/p>\n
The I-Team first asked the city about the cars on November 14th. That same day the city’s contractor that operates the garage, Metropolis SP Plus, began towing a total of 27 abandoned vehicles out of the airport garages.<\/p>\n
The city says the timing is a coincidence and they had already planned on removing abandoned vehicles before the Thanksgiving travel rush.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs the city having to pay fees to remove these vehicles?\u201d Avila asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cInitially, as we relocate them to outside the parking garages we do,” said Rodriguez.<\/p>\n
That means your tax dollars are paying to tow abandoned cars and the city isn’t getting the $16 dollar a day parking charges the cars racked up. Over the months that can add up to thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n
The city will try to recover those costs from the vehicle owners, if they can contact them, or by having the cars auctioned off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO – They’ve become a joke for influencers on TikTok: abandoned cars at the airport parking garage…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":423520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,7202,7203,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-423519","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-san-antonio","10":"tag-sanantonio","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tx","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}