Is parking permitted in bike lanes? State law at first glance seems to indicate flatly no:
§28-815D. A person shall not operate, stop, park or leave standing a vehicle in a path or lane designated as a bicycle path or lane…
No parking, right? Well, as usual there’s more to the story. The moral to the story, if there is one, is that things are often more complicated than they seem, and 2) the “local authority” provision of A.R.S. can be particularly problematical to bicyclists.
§28-627A1 This chapter and chapters 4 and 5 of this title do not prohibit a local authority… from …Regulating the standing or parking of vehicles.
So, then, in the local authority’s code, you will find some sort of ordinance that empowers somebody to erect signs controlling parking. E.g. in City of Phoenix:
36-11 Authority: (a) The City Traffic Engineer or his authorized representatives shall place and maintain or remove traffic control devices as required under the traffic ordinances of the City or State law…
36-25 Parking signs required: The City Traffic Engineer shall determine and designate by appropriate signs or markings any parking time limit.
Sign Sign Everywhere a Sign
Note that in the universe of legal signs, see e.g. ADOT’s MOAS — Manual of Approved Signs, there exist both “No Parking” (e.g. that’s an R7-2 in the photo above) and “No Parking Bike Lane” (R7-9). And furthermore both types are available in a word-based message (which carry a suffix of lower-case ‘a’, so e.g. R7-2a is the word-equivalent of the sign in the photo above) and a symbol based (in this case a simple letter P with the red slash through it). For what it’s worth, I’ve never seen the City of Phoenix use the no-parking-bike-lane specific signs, R7-9 or R7-9a.