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🇨🇭 Switzerland /Energy & Infrastructure

Zurich district council bars businesses from parking on city sidewalks, trade group calls ruling “a catastrophe”

From Neue Zürcher Zeitung · () German

Translated from German and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources In the courts
  • Zurich’s district council partially upheld a challenge to the city’s parking-permit rules and ruled that businesses may not park on sidewalks.
  • The council said federal law reserves sidewalks for pedestrians and allows other vehicles to park there only where signs or markings expressly permit it.
  • The trade association called the decision “a catastrophe,” while pedestrian and disability organizations welcomed the restriction.

Businesses in Zurich may not park their vehicles on city sidewalks, even temporarily in areas where parking is prohibited, the district council has ruled. The decision brought a victory to Christian Thomas, a board member of the Zurich pedestrian association, but the city government has not said whether it will appeal.

The council partially upheld a challenge to the parking-permit rules approved by voters on Sept. 28, 2025. The package proposed higher fees for long-term permits in blue zones and required applicants to show that they had no private parking at home, such as a garage.

A third provision would have allowed businesses, doctors and home-care workers to park on sidewalks if no other option existed and at least 1.5 meters remained beside the vehicle. The proposed annual permit would have cost 1,200 Swiss francs. The Zurich pedestrian association, Fussverkehr Schweiz and the Zurich section of the Swiss Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired opposed that provision.

a catastrophe

· Zurich trade associationThe association used the phrase to criticize the district council’s ruling.

The district council said sidewalk parking violated federal law because sidewalks are reserved for pedestrians. It said vehicles other than bicycles may park there only in exceptional cases where signs or markings expressly allow it. The council added that cantons and municipalities can mark or sign individual sidewalk parking spaces, but cannot create a general local exception through regulations applying across the city.

Thomas told the NZZ, “You don’t have to be a lawyer to realize that cars are banned from unmarked sidewalks.” He said the city parliament had evidently received poor advice when it drafted the proposal. The trade association described the ruling as “a catastrophe.”

You don’t have to be a lawyer to realize that cars are banned from unmarked sidewalks.

· Christian ThomasThomas welcomed the ruling and argued that the prohibition was already clear.
About this summary

Originally published by Neue Zürcher Zeitung in German. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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