Parking space guidelines

[jackdrew]

In restoring our town green, we are considering on street parking along the streets bordering the green and off street parking in designated parking fields created within the green. For on street parking, are there guidelines recommending against use of diagonal parking or head on parking? Or are there guidelines recommending that only off street parking be used? We'd prefer not to create more asphalt for off street parking, but if we must, we must. Any advice?

[UrbaneSprawler]

Living in a community that uses diagonal parking on the main street in the downtown area that happens to also be a state highway, with scattered head-in parking elsewhere throughout the community, there's no guidelines from a safety/engineering standpoint. It's been ingrained in my head however from the planners around the office that from an urban design perspective, diagonal parking = idyllic urban form (good), head-in parking = parking lot (evil).

[Reefe]

I'm beginning to see diagonal parking being transformed into parallel parking in the 'Main Streets' of downtown cities in my region. The diagonal/head-in parking remains in the side streets, off the main street, along with parking garages. Makes the street more pedestrian, bicycle and transit-friendly, and perhaps only the most skilled drivers, or those with compact vehicles, or those used to compact city-living, would take on the parallel parking. Promoting keeping carbon emissions down!

[DetroitPlanner]

Have you looked into pavers or porous asphalt? Both can be quite good for mitigating parking runoff. Another suggestion would be to assist home and business owners so that when the time is right to replace thier current pavements a more green solution is realized than the one that currently exists.