Lake County, CA Parking Rules: Driveway Rules (2026)

13(f) of the county's Zoning Ordinance prohibits uncovered parking anywhere in a required yard that borders a street. The only exception covers single-family, duplex, triplex and fourplex residential development, and even then the uncovered space must sit in tandem to and directly adjacent to a required covered parking space, not stand alone in the front yard. 14 sets the physical standards every driveway must meet. A driveway providing access to a parking lot must be at least twelve feet wide for one-way traffic and twenty feet wide for multiple-family, commercial or industrial two-way access, and no driveway entering a right-of-way may exceed thirty feet in width.

Curb cuts along the same street frontage must be spaced at least twenty-four feet apart, and no driveway may come within twenty feet of the start or end of a street-corner radius without Department of Public Works approval. Grade is capped too: a commercial driveway can rise no more than eight percent for its first forty feet, and anything over twelve percent beyond that needs prior Planning Department and Public Works sign-off. 14(h) targets the surface itself. In the APZ, A, TPZ, RL, RR and SR zoning districts, only the first fifty feet of the driveway, measured from the edge of the existing improved surface, must be built and kept as an all-weather surface, which the code defines as six inches of gravel or crushed rock, an oil-and-rock surface, asphaltic concrete, or concrete.

In every other zoning district, the entire driveway must be asphaltic concrete or concrete unless the Review Authority approves a different all-weather surface. Bare dirt or mud tracks do not qualify anywhere in the county.