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

100, 'Parking Location Requirements,' requires that every required parking space sit on the same site as the use it serves, on a contiguous parcel, or in a location shown on an approved Site Plan. It expressly states that property within the ultimate right-of-way of a street or highway cannot be counted toward required parking or loading facilities, closing off the option of parking on the shoulder or planned road-widening strip. The operative front-yard rule follows: parking is not allowed in the front yard setback other than in the driveway for a single-family residential use, or within a driveway in a multi-family development that is specifically designed for, and has sufficient length to provide, off-street parking for a specific dwelling unit.

In practice this means a resident cannot park on the lawn, on gravel or dirt beside the driveway, or anywhere else in the setback strip between the house and the street; the paved or approved driveway surface is the only front-setback parking allowed. For multi-family projects, a driveway used to satisfy this exception must be engineered long enough and dedicated to a specific unit, not simply an open aisle shared informally among tenants. 170's parking-area maintenance duty, which requires driveways and parking surfaces to stay free of dust, litter, and weeds. 38 and was carried forward unchanged in Ordinance 1976 § 2 (2019), the county's current Zoning Code recodification.