BANGOR, Maine — A city council committee will give preliminary consideration Wednesday night to a proposed ordinance that would ban parking too close to a driveway.
According to Assistant City Manager Robert Farrar, the proposal comes after two complaints from residents in separate parts of the city stated cars parked too close to their driveways obstructed visibility and made their driveways dangerous to exit.
“We thought we’d put it on there and let the committee take a look at it and see if they want to move it forward,” he said.
If the Government Operations Committee likes the proposal, it could recommend it for consideration by the full council for possible approval at a later meeting.
As written, the proposal would ban parking within 10 feet of the centerline of any driveway citywide. Thus, if a driveway was 10 feet wide, it would have at least a 5 foot buffer from the edge of the driveway where cars cannot park.
Currently, city code prohibits motorists from parking in a manner “so as to interfere with or hinder the ingress or egress to and from a driveway.”
But Assistant City Solicitor Paul Nicklas said in a memorandum that the ordinance is “seldom enforced, in part because of the lack of a standard indicating whether a vehicle is interfering in this manner.”
That language would be deleted from the current proposal and replaced with the more specific standard.
Bangor’s parking ordinance already prohibits parking on sidewalks and in open areas that divide and skirt roads and highways known as esplanades.
It makes an exception, allowing overflow parking from the Municipal Golf Course on the esplanade between Webster Avenue and the existing parking and on designated portions of the golf course south of Webster Avenue and west of the Bangor Hydro Substation.
Those exemptions would not be changed by the proposed ordinance. The city council’s Government Operations Committee will consider the proposal during its meeting at 6:30 p.m. in the council chambers at Bangor City Hall.
Follow Evan Belanger on Twitter at @evanbelanger.