Back-In Angled Parking on State Street

As part of our ongoing efforts to enhance safety and comfort, we are excited to introduce back-in angled parking. This update was implemented on July 28, 2025, along State Street, between Holly Street and the Forest/State/Boulevard roundabout.

This new parking layout offers numerous benefits, such as improved visibility when exiting spaces, easier loading and unloading, and increased safety for cyclists and pedestrians. A growing number of cities across North America are adopting back-in angled parking. This relatively new concept resembles standard 45-degree parking, but instead of pulling forward into the space, drivers back into the angled stall. This method is also known as reverse-angle or reverse diagonal parking.

State Street is ideally suited for this update, given the previous head-in angled parking that was on the left side of the one-way street. It is currently the only roadway we plan to convert to back-in angled parking.

How to Use Back-In Angled Parking Spaces

For the driver, the basic steps are like parallel parking:

  1. Signal to indicate your intention to park.
  2. Pull past the parking spot and come to a stop.
  3. Slowly back into the parking stall at a 45-degree angle.

Back-In Angled parking offers many benefits, including:

  • Improves exit visibility by giving drivers a better view of traffic, both vehicles as well as bicycles, when exiting the parking space into the travel lane.
  • Elimination of dangerous maneuvers by preventing drivers from blindly backing into moving traffic.
  • Safer loading/unloading by positioning the trunk or back of the vehicle toward the sidewalk.
  • Enhanced protection by allowing drivers and passengers, especially children, to enter or exit the vehicle toward the sidewalk, with the doors shielding them from moving traffic.

These advantages have demonstrated safety benefits in terms of reducing crashes, particularly those between exiting vehicles and adjacent bicyclists.

At the City of Bellingham, we prioritize enhancing safety. While pulling into a standard angle stall is simple, backing out can be challenging and often requires reversing entirely into the traffic lane before seeing oncoming traffic, which is not very safe. Backing out of standard angled parking without seeing oncoming traffic is a common cause of parking-related accidents.

A recent study from North Carolina found that 90% of parking-related fatalities and serious injuries occurred during a back-out maneuver. With back-in angled parking, entering the stall may be more difficult, but exiting is more convenient and safe because you don’t have to pull out very far to see oncoming traffic. Additionally, if you have packages to load, you can stand on the sidewalk while loading them into your trunk, improving pedestrian safety and comfort.

More information

Contact Us

For questions or more information, please contact the Public Works Department.

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