The abandoned-car file is Oakland's quiet giant. Most of it stays open.

How long does an abandoned car actually sit in Oakland's file? Long enough that most of the file is still open.

The Oakland 311 file logged 403 abandoned-auto reports in the seven days through September 1. That is second only to illegal dumping, which logged 439 in the same week. The category is the quiet giant of Oakland's request board, and it rarely gets the attention the dumping numbers do.

Here is the part worth sitting with. Of the 1,901 abandoned-auto reports filed between June 19 and July 19, 811 were still open on September 2. That is 43 percent of the cohort, two months after filing. Another 795 had closed, and 269 had been canceled. The city's own routing sends street vehicles to its vehicle enforcement unit, and the file records what the unit does with each case. It records a lot of waiting.

When the city does close a case, it takes a while. The 3,649 auto cases closed in the last 60 days had a median age of 84 days from report to closure. One in ten closed cases was more than 1,000 days old. Compare the neighborhoods: District 6 filed 405 auto reports in the last 30 days, the most in the city, ahead of District 7 at 341 and District 3 at 333. East Oakland is where the cars sit and where the reports pile up.

Read the statuses carefully, because the file has limits. A closed case does not prove the car was towed. It means the city closed the ticket. A canceled case means the report was dropped, sometimes because the car moved on its own before anyone came out. The file cannot tell you which corner still has a car on it tonight. That gap between the file and the street is the whole story of how Oakland tracks its abandoned vehicles.

The process splits by property line, which confuses a lot of people. A car parked in the public right of way, meaning on the street, goes through Oak311 to the city's vehicle enforcement unit. A car abandoned on private property is a police matter, handled by the OPD vehicle abatement detail. The city's own pages lay out both routes, and neither promises a date.

What to do: report the car with its license plate and exact address, and keep the case number. If it is on the street, file through the Oak311 app or the city's abandoned-vehicle page. If it is on private property, call the OPD vehicle abatement detail at (510) 777-8538 or email [email protected]. One report starts the clock. Repeat reports at the same spot are how a corner becomes a known problem, the same way it works for dumping.