Back-in angle parking, also called ''back-in diagonal parking'', ''reverse angle parking'', ''reverse diagonal parking'', or (in the United Kingdom) ''reverse echelon parking,'' is a traffic engineering technique intended to improve the safety of on-street parking.
For back-in parking, vehicles preparing to enter a
parking space
A parking space, parking place or parking spot is a location that is designated for parking, either paved or unpaved. It can be in a parking garage, in a parking lot or on a city street. The space may be delineated by road surface markings. ...
drive slightly past the space, signal, and then back into the space. When leaving the space, drivers have an unobstructed view of traffic and can enter the traffic stream directly. In comparison, drivers using traditional pull-in angle parking (entering the parking space with the front first) often have difficulty seeing other traffic as they back out of the space when leaving again, resulting in traffic delays and considerable risk of collisions with pedestrians, bicyclists, and vehicles.
Existing pull-in angle parking spaces can be converted to back-in angle parking by re-striping to flip the angle of the stall markings. Streets with parallel parking have also been converted to back-in angle parking. In either case, the pavement markings are often augmented with signage indicating that vehicles must be backed in.
Advantages and disadvantages
According to the Pedestrian & Bicycle Information Center, back-in angle parking provides motorists with better vision of pedestrians, bicyclists, motor vehicles, and other road users as they exit a parking space and enter moving traffic.
Back-in angle parking also eliminates much of the difficulty that drivers, especially older drivers, have when backing into moving traffic.
The vehicle positioning associated with back-in angle parking allows eye contact and verbal or non-verbal communication between exiting drivers and other road users. Back-in angle parking positions the back of the vehicle next to the sidewalk/footway, enabling easier loading and unloading of the trunk/boot. It also positions the driver and passengers (including children) to enter and exit the vehicle towards the sidewalk instead of stepping toward traffic.
In some cities, parallel parking adjacent to
bicycle lane
Bike lanes (US) or cycle lanes (UK) are types of bikeways (cycleways) with lanes on the roadway for cyclists only. In the United Kingdom, an on-road cycle-lane can be firmly restricted to cycles (marked with a solid white line, entry by motor v ...
s is permitted. This puts the bike lane in the dangerous
door zone
Dooring is the act of opening a motor vehicle door into the path of another road user. Dooring can happen when a driver has parked or stopped to exit their vehicle, or when passengers egress from cars, taxis and rideshares into the path of a cy ...
, but angle parking eliminates this hazard. Compared to parallel parking, reverse angle parking often provides more parking spaces in a given length of street, though this will vary depending on site conditions such as street width and the locations of driveways and fire hydrants.
![Reverse parking damage](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Reverse_parking_damage.jpg)
The primary disadvantage of back-in angle parking is that some drivers find the backing maneuver awkward, particularly if they have limited backing experience or the vehicle has poor rearward visibility. This can be overcome by intelligent use of side mirrors and reversing cameras, though
blind spots can remain. Another criticism is that exhaust emissions may annoy pedestrians and residents nearby. Inexperienced drivers may take a wider clearance from an adjacent vehicle, resulting in less efficient use of available space. Also, when backing into a relatively enclosed area (e.g., a solid wall or stall), unseen pedestrians may more easily be injured, since visibility behind the vehicle is more limited. In standard angle parking, the driver takes very little time to park, and waits for a gap in the traffic before backing out, whereas back-in angle parking forces traffic to wait until the maneuver is completed, compounding gridlock and congestion problems.
In 2015, the city of
Fremont, California
Fremont is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. Located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area, Fremont has a population of 230,504 as of 2020, making it the fourth List of cities and towns in the San Fra ...
reverted its experiment with back-in angle parking.
See also
*
Angle parking
References
External links
{{Commons category, Back-in angle parking
BikeWalk Montana: Reverse Angle ParkingCity of Austin informational videoCity of Winnipeg informational videoEverything you need to know about Parking Rules
Parking