City parking
Like the rest of the UK, Scotland's major towns and cities have designated motorcycle parking bays. These on-street parking areas are identified with the words SOLO M/CS ONLY painted on the road.
If riders park with consideration, most SOLO M/CS ONLY parking bays can accommodate four or five motorcycles side-by-side. Some parking bays also have security railings which motorcyclists can use as anchors to lock their motorbikes to.
SOLO M/CS ONLY parking bays are free.
All too often in our city centres we see motorbikes, usually European, with parking tickets on them. In most cases the owners of these bikes do not realise that it is often illegal to park motorbikes on a pavement or to park a motorbike in a car space on the road. Therefore, great care needs to be taken when parking your motorcycle.
Unfortunately many local councils do not issue maps of where SOLO M/CS ONLY parking bays can be found.
However Glasgow City Council list all its roads where motorcycle parking bays can be found on their web site, and The City of Edinburgh Council provided SaltireBlue MCC with a document which lists the roads in the capital where SOLO M/CS ONLY parking bays can be found and how many bays there are.
We hope this information will be of some use to both local bikers as well as motorcyclists from further away. SaltireBlue MCC will endeavour to get motorcycling parking bay information from other Scottish councils.
More information about UK laws which apply to the parking of motor vehicles can be found online in the Highway Code.