Richmond, VA Parking Rules: Driveway Rules (2026)

Sec. 8, in Article IV, Division 2 of the zoning ordinance, governs how a single- or two-family lot may connect its driveway to a public street. The rule works in two layers. First, if the lot has alley access available, no driveway may cross the street at all: the dwelling has to enter from the alley instead of cutting a new curb cut across the sidewalk. Second, where a street driveway is still allowed, a corner lot cannot put it on the street that functions as the lot's principal street frontage if the lot has another street frontage, or alley access, that could serve it instead, which pushes curb cuts off the primary, more heavily traveled frontage of a corner property and onto the secondary street or alley.

Once a driveway is permitted, its width through the front yard is capped at nine feet for single- and two-family dwellings, a limit meant to keep front yards from being consumed by paved surface and to preserve on-street parking and pedestrian sightlines along the block. The same nine-foot cap and alley-access-first rule are repeated, district by district, at Sec. 8 for the R-2 district and in the parallel driveway sections for Richmond's other residential districts in Article IV, so the standard is consistent across the city's single- and two-family zones rather than varying block to block. The rule was added to the code by Ord. No. 2020-171, adopted September 28, 2020, which rewrote the driveway sections across the residential divisions.