Multi-car garages with entry on the side of a house with a single width driveway is a common design. It needs a long enough apron to permit the additional maneuvering required. I've seen the driveways then be as narrow as 8 or 9 foot. If you don't have enough distance between the house and the property line to accommodate the longer apron needed for maneuvering room, you could also consider a rear-entry garage. You can find a number of ideas by Googleing "House Plans" and specifying side entry or rear entry garage in the options.

Once the driveway gets to garage it is an apron and the 12’ restriction does not apply.

Outside of Florida, that is the pretty typical design. That is - driveway cuts are limited to single cars. In my area, that extends to the entire ROW which would be the sidewalk area.

So then I am wondering what your concern is?

Are you planning a front facing driveway, just not on the front plane of the house?

We have a similar code but garages are allowed in front just strongly discouraged.

Thanks everyone - I didn’t realize they are common - they are rare here in Miami. I’ll search house plans with rear entry garages. Our lot is 8,250 square feet and I am hoping it’s big enough to allow for an approach off the sidewalk and street that’s 12 at least and 17 at most feet wide and then gets wider past after the sidewalk. We don’t have a corner lot which is the only way I’ve seen it done here in Miami. New building code here in Miami.

How wide is your lot and will you have a detached garage? Can you post an overhead view of your lot and house site?

I'm posting an overhead of mine just for an example because we bought an existing house with a narrow-ish driveway. (Older neighborhood.) It had a small semi-attached garage on the right, which we tore down and replaced with a larger detached garage, but still only had room for a single car driveway. The apron flares out between the sidewalk and the street, but you can't really tell because of the trees. The driveway flares out in front of the garage to access the two separate doors. We staggered the front so that it's not just a flat expanse of one giant door, and to give a bit more space b/w garage and house when backing out of the left side garage door. (Backing out on the left was good practice when the kids were learning to drive.) Also the deeper right side gives it room for an interior stairway up to the 2nd floor storage space, which has windows on 3 sides and is suprisingly bright and roomy.

Now that we have 4 cars it's kind of a PITA when everyone is home. But there's enough room to pull up a big truck (F150) on the right side in front of the garage and still have room for my son to pull his car (Taurus) up to park on the left. DD and I get to park our cars in the garage. :)

It all really depends on the layout of the garage and driveway and what you want to do with it. We have a 2 stall garage attached to the back of the house and side-facing. The driveway from the street back to the rear plane of the house is 10' wide, then it widens out in both directions. This allows us maneuvering room to get in and out of the garage plus room for 2-3 cars to park in front of the garage.

If your garage is side facing (or rear facing) as it sounds like your zoning requires, it doesn't really help you get into or out of the garage if the driveway is any wider than 12' between the sidewalk and the house. It's the distance between the garage doors and the property line for the turning pad that is really important.

The only other reason to increase the front yard driveway width is extra space to park visitor's cars, but 17' is barely wide enough to pass around a parked car if they don't part right on the edge of the pavement.

As to what sort of garage you can do, the width of the lot is going to be key along with depth between the front and rear setbacks.

I can only think of a couple of houses in my neighborhood that have anything other than a single width driveway but a two car garage, usually attached to the back of the house. It just looks nicer than a wide tarmac of concrete.

Wow thanks everyone- the photos help too. I’m seeing now I need to worry more about how wide and deep our lot is, not so much the driveway width. I found these too