Wilmington, NC Parking Rules: Street Parking Limits (2026)

Section 5-52(a) lists nineteen locations where no one may park on a Wilmington street, exempting only emergency vehicle operators, law enforcement, and public employees parking in the performance of duty. The list bars parking in front of a private driveway (citing G.S. § 20-162), within fifteen feet of a fire hydrant or fire station entrance, within twenty-five feet of an intersection's curb lines (fifteen feet of property lines where there is no curb), within an intersection or in front of an alley, within twenty feet of a ground-mounted traffic signal or stop/yield sign, on a sidewalk or plaza, on the roadway side of another parked vehicle, alongside a street excavation that would obstruct traffic, on a bridge or in a tunnel, within fifty feet of a bridge or underpass approach (two hundred feet at the Heide Trask drawbridge), within fifty feet of a grade crossing, in a manner leaving less than ten feet of roadway for travel, on the left side of a two-way street against the direction of travel, in a bus stop, in a marked traffic lane, on a median, on a crosswalk, or within twenty feet of a crosswalk or handicap ramp. Item (19) adds a defined downtown zone bounded by the Cape Fear River, Red Cross, Fourth, Chestnut, Fifth Avenue, Market, Second, Orange, Front and Ann Streets, where street parking is barred outside marked spaces and active loading zones.

Section 5-52(b) authorizes the manager to install no-parking signs or yellow curb markings, but expressly states enforcement of subsection (a) does not depend on those devices being posted.