What is Back-In Angle Parking?
Designed to improve safety when entering and exiting traffic, back-in angle parking allows drivers to reverse into spots, making them vigilant of other bicyclists, pedestrians and traffic around them. When drivers leave, they pull forward into the street instead of backing into it, allowing them to see oncoming traffic easier. Parking lines are angled against the direction of traffic indicating that the driver must back into the spot.
What are the benefits?
Other benefits of back-in angle parking include added safety for children exiting a vehicle and being directed to the sidewalk as well as having the vehicle trunk closer to the sidewalk for easy loading and unloading. Reverse Angle parking has multiple safety benefits for vehicles, pedestrians, and bicyclists.
- Provides drivers with better vision
- Safer position for back of the vehicle to unload
- Positions the driver and passengers, including children to enter and exit the vehicle towards the sidewalk rather than into moving traffic
- Increases parking capacity
How does it work?
New signage to educate drivers on the steps to park in a back-in angled parking will be included on St. Louis Blvd. The steps are:
Step 1: Find an open spot and put on your right-turn signal to let drivers know that you plan to park.
Step 2: Pull past the parking spot and stop.
Step 3: Slowly back into the parking spot.
Other Cities Experiences
Studies in Tucson, AZ; Portland, OR; Seattle, WA and Pottstown, PA have shown consistently that back-in angle parking reduces the likelihood of crashes.
According to the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center, Tucson tracked data for bicycle/car crashes before and after installing back-in angle parking, and found an average of three to four crashes per month with front-in angle parking compared to zero reported bicycle/car crashes for the first four years following implementation of back-in angle parking.
Back-in angle parking isn’t new. It has been successfully implemented in many communities across all parts of the US, including: Arlington, VA; Baltimore, MD; Birmingham, AL; Des Moines, IA; Honolulu, HI; Indianapolis, IN; Knoxville, TN; Marquette, MI; Missoula, MT; Montreal, QC (Canada); Olympia, WA; Peoria, IL; Salt Lake City, UT and Wilmington, DE to name only a few.