What are the typical dimensions of a parking space in Australia?

As you squeeze your yoga-toned backside into your 6387mm long, 2263mm wide, and 2039mm high Chevy Silverado HD (Heavy Duty) LTZ Premium into a parking space you may well be thinking: What is the standard car park size in Australia?

That’s easy to answer, but the exact response may change in the not-too-distant future.

Since 1993, the standard car park size in Australia has been, in accordance with Standards Australia guidelines, 5.4 metres long and between 2.4 and 2.6 metres wide.

Those measurements were decided upon so the standard parking space size in Australia could comfortably fit a generic model and so fit average car width of passenger vehicles that were popular at the time, including the Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore. No matter what the bay or types of parking space, the car park design was created to meet those standards.

Dimensions may vary, including parallel parking dimensions in Australia, depending on the location and types of vehicles that are allowed to use the allocated space. For instance, disabled parking, in compliance with Standards Australia, requires minimum dimensions of 5.5m long by 3m wide and one allocated space should have a minimum headroom clearance of 2.5m for use by vehicles fitted with a roof-mounted wheelchair rack.

But the original measurements for car parking spaces, including car park width in Australia, may have to be altered sooner rather than later. Cars have grown bigger and heavier over the years since – some mainstream utes are over five metres long and, as one example, the Chevy Silverado HD LTZ Premium is almost 6.4m long and tips the scales at a listed 3762kg. As a result, there have been rumblings in the hallways of officialdom recently about changing the typical car park size in Australia to better accommodate our growing infatuation with super-sized US utes, including the Silverado, Ram 1500 and 2500 and the Ford F-150.

These behemoths require the minimum car parking space dimensions in Australia to grow in order for them to comfortably fit in the space allotted. At the moment, US utes, among others, attract negative attention because they tend not to fit in the current Australian Standards car parking dimensions – unless it’s in a country town somewhere where ‘normal’ parking rules don’t apply – or maybe the owners of these utes just couldn’t be bothered trying to properly park their gargantuan conveyances. One way or the other, something needs to change.

Standard car park sizes are not becoming smaller in Australia, vehicles are simply bigger now than they were 30 years ago. You’re not going crazy and imagining cars are getting larger, they just are.

The size of standard car parking spaces may differ slightly between buildings, states and territories, but those aforementioned minimum dimensions apply and represent best practice. Australian car park sizing may differ from other countries, say, for instance, USA, due to the size of vehicles there.

The different types of car parking spaces, with which we are all very familiar, are parallel, perpendicular, and angle parking. Dimensions may vary very slightly, depending on whether it’s an open-air car park or a multi-storey car parking garage, but the ease with which you exit and enter your vehicle hinges on the ability of those parkers either side of your spot to have the faintest clue about how to park and leave enough space for you to open/close your door.

Even though it sometimes feels like you’re driving into a dark, dank dungeon with a very low ceiling when you enter a shopping centre carpark or an office block carpark, the standard car park height in Australia is about 2m, but make sure you enter with caution because 1) the sign may be incorrect, 2) your vehicle may be taller than that, 3) there may be HVC piping protruding from the ceiling, ready to, at the very least, give your whip antenna a good whack, and 4) the ceiling-mounted fire sprinklers may stick down just enough to gouge into your vehicle’s roof.

Officials are busy rethinking the engineering of multi-storey car parks because mainstream vehicles are becoming heavier – as evidenced by our US utes reference above – and so structures will have to be even stronger and more robust than ever before.

Interesting times ahead.