Gaston County, NC Parking Rules: Driveway Rules (2026)

UDO Sec. 4 sets the default rule that off-street parking areas must be paved with asphalt, concrete, bituminous surface treatment, brick, or an equivalent material, with pervious paving such as turfstone encouraged. Subsection B lists the situations where gravel is allowed instead, provided spaces are still marked: nonresidential development with five or fewer spaces outside the Urban Standards Overlay, industrial districts without retail sales, overflow lots for public assembly facilities set back 200 feet from a residential structure, uses granted a paving exception elsewhere in the UDO, and, most relevant for homeowners, item 4, parking for one- or two-family residential uses, which is exempt from the paving mandate outright.

Subsection C carves handicapped-accessible spaces back out of the gravel exception: those must always be paved. Subsection F then reins in the residential gravel allowance at the street: whenever a parking area abuts a paved street, the driveway connecting to it must be paved for the first 15 feet inward from the edge of the public street unless a noted exception applies, so a gravel driveway typically still needs a short paved apron at the road. Subsection D requires gravel spaces to be marked by paint or another acceptable method, and Subsection E requires all parking surfaces, paved or gravel, to be kept free of potholes and properly maintained.