Mountain View, CA Parking Rules: Driveway Rules (2026)

City Code Sec. 111(d) requires that "any vehicle located in areas visible from a public street shall be parked or stored only upon an asphalt, concrete, masonry or other permanently paved and permitted surface," ruling out parking on bare dirt, gravel, or lawn within view of the street. Subsection (e) separately bars any vehicle in view of the street from encroaching onto the public sidewalk. Subsection (i) then sets the maximum width of paved parking area a residential lot in an R1 or R2 district may use for street-visible vehicle parking: lots with no garage or only a one-car garage may pave and use up to 20 feet of width, while lots with a two-car or three-car garage may use up to 30 feet.

These standards work together with the vehicle-count and height limits in the same section (one tall vehicle over 7 feet per unit, 12-foot maximum height) to define exactly how much of a residential frontage can be turned into parking. The rule targets the common practice of extending a driveway across the entire front yard or parking directly on unimproved ground, and it applies regardless of what type of vehicle, car, truck, RV, or trailer, is involved, since the surfacing and width limits apply to "any vehicle" rather than singling out recreational vehicles.