Residential streets are designed to be a compromise between providing parking, allowing emergency access, and preventing traffic from driving too fast in front of homes. Residential streets need to be narrow to discourage people from speeding in front of people's homes, yet they need to be wide enough to allow emergency vehicles to drive past cars that are parked on the street. It is important to note that residential streets are not intended to be wide enough to guarantee that traffic can flow in both directions at the same time.
The narrowest residential streets in Providence Village are wide enough to have cars parked on both sides of the street and still provide a minimum of 10 feet between them (and more room is usually available when people have done a good job of parking). Passenger cars are 6 feet wide and fire trucks are 8 feet wide, so each can travel between the parked cars. Forcing cars to take turns traveling in each direction on a residential street is not considered to be a problem that needs to be corrected. In fact, this is a natural way to slow down traffic on a residential street (which people are often worried about).
Beyond the situations described above, it is not legal to park within 15 feet of a fire hydrant, in a crosswalk, or within 5 feet of a mailbox, Monday through Saturday between the hours of 8 am and 6 pm.
