Hi,
I have a set from Woodland Scenic with some items for streets. There are also parking meters. I placed them on a sidewalk but I wonder how should I mark places for cars on a street. I am not sure how it looks in US. Which version is correct A or B?
Thanks,
Arek
When using parking meters there usually isn’t a line at all. The meters are the front and back of the parking spot. The outside distance is based on the distance from the curb. A car is supposed to park within a foot of the curb. Sometimes they will paint a line from the curb out but most municipalities find it easier and cost effective to not paint the lines.
I have seen both, and it seems each city has its own way of doing things, but I think the more common is just a solid line from the curb – so sort of like B without the horizontal line connecting them all up.
In some cities the parking meters are now electronic, so each parking spot has a numbered plaque and a central device for inserting money once you have chosen your spot number.
By the way when I was a youngster many towns in the USA seemed to be experimenting with angled parking, such as you see in parking garage structures – this narrowed the drivable part of the street but did in theory allow more cars to be parked per block.
Dave Nelson
My hometown has several areas with the first version, partial markings, and also has areas with kind of a compromise, perpendicular lines out from the curb, with partial parallel lines similar to that first version. And, just to confuse the issue, several years ago, as part of a historical comemoration, the city fathers restored angled parking to a portion ot the main business area. I think the lines are about at a 60 degree angle to the curb.
Around here, I’ve seen them with and without lines, but the meters are usually placed on the curb or sidewalk at the same point where the front end of the parked vehicle would be. An exception would be where two meters were placed on a single post - in your diagram, such a post would be located at one of the lines between two of the parking spaces, with each meter serving the space to which it is nearest. The third space would have its meter on its own post. Note too that the right wheels of the vehicle must be within a certain distance from the curb - usually a foot or less. The only exception would be on a one-way street, where parking may be allowed on either or both sides. Parking against the flow of traffic is illegal.
Wayne
Anything I could find on the subject simply said, “the parking space shall be or a size to accomodate a standard size vehicle.” I don’t think parking spaces have changed size since the days of the huge cars of the 60s and 70s. What I would do is use my largest car (not a truck) and make the spaces just a tiny bit longer than that. We have to use selective compression all the time in our modeling (unless we have a warehouse to build in) so a cramped parking space won’t look out of place. Most of us make our roads narrower than real roads so smaller parking spaces should look okay.
As was pointed out in other posts, the meter is located where the front of the parked car would be. If the post has two meters on it, they are located between two spaces, with a single meter at the end if there’s an odd number of spaces.
They don’t paint the pavement or the curbs here, but one thing you might want to model is to paint the no parking zones with yellow paint on the curbs. The last 5 or 6 metres before an intersection is often painted with a yellow curb.
One thing that is happening in our city (and I don’t care for it) is that meters are being removed and ticket dispensing boxes are appearing on posts, one or two per block, depending on the length of the block. The idea is that you park your car, get out, walk to the dispenser, pay for some time, walk back to your car and put the ticket on the dash where it can be seen. The problem with that, besides having to walk back and forth to the dispenser, is that the spaces are not neatly defined by the placement of the meters any more. People can park their cars with large spaces between them and the next vehicle so that in the space of a block, there’s enough empty space to park another car if they were closer together. The up side, I guess, is that someone with a long truck doesn’t have to plug two meters.
Sorry if I got a bit off topic there.
Actually, in this country, there’s quite a bit of variety among the various communities. Lots of local options. I even understand that in some communities in some of the Northern border states, one can find something on the parking meter stands I haven’t seen since I was in Skeleftia, Sweden in 1990 - Electric outlet boxes, so drivers with block heaters can plug their cars in if they are going to be turned off in cold weather. Of course, Sweden was 220 Volts, US is 120 Volts standard.
I don’t know about the parking spaces today being the same size they always were. There’s a gentleman locally who drives a 1964 Buick Wildcat, same size car I took my parallel parking test on, and when I see the car parked, he often is overhanging the space behind him by a good foot. He also sometimes has trouble finding a parking space in local malls where he can park without sticking into the traffic lane That car was a BIG barge!.
Thank you very much for all responses. I attached pictures of my layout. An angle parking would be the best solution but I have no space for this. The part of the street is on the edge of the layout and a car would not fit on the layout. So I think I will do partial markings and according to your advice a yellow curb before and behind a parking zone.
PS I googled for a 1964 Buick Wildcat. An Impressive car !!![:)]
Here are a couple of shots of how I did mine:
As far as lines go everyone does them differently. It’s up to you.
If you want to see how it’s done in a specific spot, Google Earth is your friend.[:)]
Brent