Anaheim, CA Parking Rules: Loading Zones (2026)

AMC 14.32.040 gives the City Traffic Engineer sole authority to establish loading zones for loading and unloading passengers or materials, and caps each zone at one hundred feet unless the Traffic Engineer finds satisfactory evidence to extend it, in which case the maximum stretches to one hundred forty feet. The section ties directly back to Section 14.32.030, which limits how long any vehicle may occupy a designated loading spot: no more than three minutes for loading or unloading passengers, and no more than twenty minutes for loading or unloading materials. The same twenty-minute-or-less rule also governs stopping on grades steeper than twelve percent, in alleys, within twenty-five feet of a hospital entrance, within fifty feet of a police station, and in marked bus stops.

Parking in a loading zone for any purpose other than loading or unloading is separately unlawful under Section 14.32.210, regardless of whether the vehicle stays within the time limit for actual loading activity; a vehicle that simply parks there without loading or unloading cargo or passengers violates the section outright. Bus loading zones are established under a parallel but distinct provision, Section 14.32.050, administered by the Traffic and Transportation Manager with a separate one-hundred-foot cap, extendable to one hundred thirty feet, and required red-curb or signed markings reading "No Standing - Bus Loading Zone."

The loading zone length caps in Section 14.32.040 date to Ordinance 4529 from August 1984 and have not been amended since, so the same one-hundred and one-hundred-forty-foot limits have applied for four decades.