Boulder, CO Parking Rules: Driveway Rules (2026)

Section 9-9-6(d)(1)(A), part of the city's Parking Standards chapter, sets the baseline rule that no parking area may be located in any required landscaped setback abutting a street, which covers most front-yard parking on residential lots. The section then carves out a narrow driveway exception for the RR, RE, RL, A, and P zoning districts: if the lot's existing driveway serves, or formerly served, as access to at least one parking space that meets the title's design standards and sits outside the landscaped setback, the property owner may park up to two vehicles in the driveway within the setback itself.

Beyond that built-in exception, a property owner who wants more relief must go through Section 9-2-3(j), which lets the Board of Zoning Adjustment or city manager grant a variance for parking in a front-yard setback, but only for RR, RE, or RL lots where an attached garage or carport was converted to living space before January 1, 2005, the current owner did not do the conversion, no compliant parking space can reasonably be provided elsewhere on the site, and restoring the garage would cause significant economic hardship.

Any such variance-approved space must be paved with asphalt, concrete, or similar hard surface, comply with Section 9-9-5's site access control standards, measure nine to sixteen feet wide and at least nineteen feet long, and may not encroach into the right-of-way or block a sidewalk.