Bensalem, PA Parking Rules: Loading Zones (2026)

Section 232-587 applies wherever a building is newly erected, substantially altered, or used for commercial, industrial or manufacturing purposes, as an institution, or as an apartment house, or for any use that involves receiving or distributing merchandise or materials. At least one loading space is required in every case, sized to a minimum of 780 square feet in a 12-by-65-foot footprint, with access-road radii wide enough to serve the largest truck expected to use the site. The loading requirement stacks on top of, rather than substituting for, the off-street parking spaces and aisles required under section 232-586, so a warehouse or retail building needs both its parking count and its separate loading bay.

The code also bars a design where trucks back directly off a public street or right-of-way into the loading space; all turning and maneuvering has to happen on the property itself, which is why a loading dock typically sits at the rear or side of a building reached by an internal driveway. Where new construction involves a railroad siding, the applicant's plans for that siding must go to the railroad for approval, with a copy of that approval filed with the Township, before the loading area is built out.

Some districts layer additional restrictions on top of section 232-587: the general-commercial district's parking rules at section 232-586(d)(3) separately bar parking of vehicles within 25 feet of a street or property line, and the BP district caps parking-lot impervious coverage at 50 percent, both of which constrain where a loading area can practically sit on a commercial lot.