Plano, TX Parking Rules: Driveway Rules (2026)

Section 12-115, "Parking of Certain Equipment in Certain Zoning Districts," is Plano's answer to residents parking on lawns, gravel strips, or bare dirt beside a driveway. The rule applies in any zoning district: an owner, operator, occupant, or person with care, custody, or control of the property commits an offense if a motor vehicle is parked or stored anywhere on the lot that isn't a solid and continuously paved concrete or asphalt surface built specifically for parking, and that surface must match the full dimensions of the vehicle, so a car can't straddle pavement and grass.

The city manager or a designee enforces the section. Four narrow carve-outs keep the rule from over-reaching: property specifically exempted by the Zoning Ordinance, properties with a certificate of appropriateness for heritage designation, city rights-of-way built of brick or pavers where parking is otherwise allowed, and alternative parking surfaces the city engineer has approved in writing. Subsection (d) also grandfathers a narrow class of gravel parking: it's an affirmative defense if the gravel surface was installed before November 1979 in a General Residential (GR) or Single Family Residence-7 (SF-7) district and has been kept in its original size and condition ever since, a defense the property owner must prove, not something code enforcement has to disprove.

The same section separately bans parking heavy commercial vehicles, race cars, dune buggies, and farm equipment in residential districts, but that ban is a distinct offense from the paved-surface requirement covered here.