One of the perils of living in suburbia is having to drive everywhere you go to reach your desired destination. Public transit is not an option for you.
So when it comes time to travel to The City for dinner and a movie, families in the Giant Mom-mobile are often stuck trying to find an adequate parking space for their larger-than-it-needs-to-be vehicle.
ReThinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking
Which brings the question of HOW BIG IS THE AVERAGE PARKING LOT SPACE?
Would you believe that there are standards of how much room an individual parking space should be? Web Watch believes that size starts with “just a bit too small” as the official measurement.
But in reality, the standards are much more lenient. You should expect to find the average parking lot space to be about 320 square feet. Some parking lots shrink that down a smidge, to 270 square feet.
So what does this mean for the average layout? As it’s the width that most people are concerned about, you should expect to find parking spaces averaging out to be about 7-1/2 feet wide all the way to a super-generous 10 feet wide.
As for why you should learn to parallel park in tight situations – the average parallel parking space is just a mere 20 feet long… but you should give yourself an extra 2 feet for entering and exiting (so you don’t hit the people ahead or behind you).