Dearborn Heights, MI Mobility & Curb Rules: Bike Lane Rules (2026)

Dearborn Heights City Code § 32-269 sits in Division 4 of the Uniform Traffic Code, which governs the traffic-control devices the city's traffic engineer uses to mark the roadway. Once the traffic engineer establishes a bicycle lane under section 32-267, after a traffic survey and engineering study, and marks it with official traffic-control devices that conform to the Michigan Manual of Uniform Traffic-Control Devices, section 32-269 takes over to say a driver cannot operate a vehicle on or across that lane at all, with a single carve-out for entering or leaving adjacent property, such as pulling into a driveway that crosses the lane.

Parking in the lane is likewise off-limits unless an official sign specifically permits it there, so a driver cannot treat a striped bike lane as an overflow parking space just because the adjacent curb lane is full. The companion section, 32-268, applies the same basic structure to a separate bicycle path, a route built apart from the roadway, adding that a snowmobile may use a snow-covered bicycle path that has not been plowed for bicycle traffic, an exception that does not carry over to a bicycle lane under section 32-269.

Both a bicycle-lane violation under section 32-269 and a bicycle-path violation under section 32-268 are classified as misdemeanors rather than civil infractions, a stiffer classification than most of the parking and stopping violations elsewhere in the traffic code, and one enforced by a Dearborn Heights police officer issuing a citation for prosecution in district court rather than a civil-infraction ticket.