Bowie, MD Parking Rules: RV & Boat Parking (2026)

Section 26-4 lists, exclusively, which vehicles residents of the City's residential base zones and the rural and agricultural base zones may park or store on their lots: private passenger motor vehicles (Subsection A), one unoccupied camping vehicle (Subsection B), one watercraft together with its carrying trailer (Subsection C), one qualifying commercial vehicle (Subsection D), and, for agricultural uses, farm vehicles and machinery (Subsection E). A camping vehicle, defined elsewhere in Chapter 26 to include travel trailers, campers, motor homes and truck campers, must be unoccupied to qualify, and only one of each of the camping-vehicle and watercraft categories is permitted per lot regardless of how many separate RVs or boats a household owns.

Section 26-8 then restricts where on the lot those vehicles may sit: motor vehicles, watercraft, trailers, motor homes and camping vehicles cannot be parked or stored on a deck, patio, porch, walkway or sidewalk, or on a basketball, tennis or sport court, or on any unpaved area of a residential lot, with the single exception of a declared snow emergency. Related sections push further: § 26-3 separately bars storing an inoperative camping vehicle or unregistered trailer on a residential lot outside a private garage at any time, and § 26-9 caps cargo trailers used for construction or delivery at 30 days on a paved surface.

Read together, the chapter steers RV and boat storage onto a driveway or other paved surface, one unit of each type, rather than the yard or street.