Notes / 311 / Sidewalks
How is the city doing with sidewalks?
Data through August 13, 2026· collected daily from the city’s records
3,622 sidewalk and curb-ramp repair requests are open. The median one was submitted in October 2023. That’s up from 3,202 a year ago. Requests that did close took a median of 22 days.
The city’s “Repair Sidewalk or Ramp” service — concrete, brick, and curb-ramp repairs handled by Public Works. Every number traces to the individual requests.
Open requests over time
Open sidewalk requests at each month boundary, 2022–present. Dashed line is the trailing 12-month average.
Total outstanding wait
Add up how long every open request has been waiting and you get the backlog's total outstanding wait, measured in ticket-years: 11,583 as of August 2026. The line rises when the backlog grows or its requests age, and falls only when long-waiting requests are closed. The count above can fall even while the oldest requests remain open; this line can’t.
How long closed requests took
Of requests closed in each month, the median days from submission to closure. A month spent closing old backlog reads high; a large batch of quick closures reads low.
Closed on time, by the city’s own deadline
The city’s current target for sidewalk requests is 365 days — a due date set on each request when it’s filed. Each bar shows, of requests closed that month, the share closed on or before its due date. Per RVA311, the target is a department-level workload figure that may be refined over time, not a per-request deadline published to the resident. Same measure as the citywide deadline note.
Monthly counts range from 16 to 856 closed requests, so single months swing; hover for exact counts.
Where the open requests are
Open requests, the share still open past one year, and how old the open queue is, by area. Request counts reflect what residents report.
- The Fan31334%3.6y
- The Museum District25949%2.4y
- Carytown13449%3.6y
- Windsor Farms11759%4.1y
- Northern Barton Heights10834%2.4y
- Church Hill10518%2.7y
- Carillon9765%3.8y
- Woodland Heights9762%3.1y
- Bellevue9355%2.7y
- Randolph8519%2.3y
- Byrd Park8334%4.0y
- Oregon Hill8134%2.8y
- Church Hill North7034%2.2y
- Stadium6849%3.1y
- Swansboro West6545%2.0y
115 neighborhoods have open sidewalk requests; the list shows 15 at a time, ranked by the sorted column. 93 open requests carry no location — the city marks some records private, and we withhold location on those. "Past 1 yr" is the share of tickets filed since 2022, now at least a year old, that are still open — a year is also the city's current target; areas with fewer than 25 such tickets show —.
See the geography note for how 311 volume maps citywide.
How old the open queue is
Open requests by the year they were submitted. The oldest open request was submitted June 18, 2018.
- 2018131
- 2019255
- 2020244
- 2021374
- 2022527
- 2023382
- 2024554
- 2025664
- 2026491
1,004 open requests were submitted before 2022. Open counts include every request the city’s system still marks open, regardless of age — this reconciles with the city’s own dashboard; see methodology.
The requests themselves
The 10 oldest open sidewalk requests. Each links to our record page, which links to the request on the city’s RVA311 portal.
| Submitted | Type | Location | Neighborhood | District |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 18, 2018 | Concrete Sidewalk Repair | 1317 Avondale Ave 23227 | Bellevue | 3 |
| June 18, 2018 | Concrete Sidewalk Repair | 3201 W Grace St 23221 | The Museum District | 1 |
| June 18, 2018 | Concrete Sidewalk Repair | 1208 Confederate Ave 23227 | Laburnum Park | 3 |
| June 18, 2018 | Concrete Sidewalk Repair | 4502 West Broad Street | Sauer's Gardens | 1 |
| June 18, 2018 | Concrete Sidewalk Repair | 4403 Grove Ave 23221 | Mary Munford | 1 |
| June 19, 2018 | Brick Sidewalk Repair | 4313 Coventry Road 23221 | Windsor Farms | 1 |
| June 19, 2018 | Concrete Sidewalk Repair | 3901 W Broad St 23230 | Sauer's Gardens | 1 |
| June 19, 2018 | Concrete Sidewalk Repair | 5211 Devonshire Road 23225 | Westover Hills | 4 |
| June 21, 2018 | Concrete Sidewalk Repair | 3039 Monument Ave 23221 | The Museum District | 1 |
| June 22, 2018 | Concrete Sidewalk Repair | 717 Arnold Ave 23222 | Highland Terrace | 6 |
Browse every sidewalk request, filterable by neighborhood and status
Methodology
- Scope.Requests to Public Works under the city’s “Repair Sidewalk or Ramp” service — subtypes Concrete Sidewalk Repair, Brick Sidewalk Repair, Repair Curb Ramp, the finest grain the city's 311 taxonomy has. Adjacent request types are separate services and not counted here: Curb and Gutter Repair, New Sidewalk, New Curb and Gutter, and sidewalk grate reports. Test records and call-center log entries are excluded everywhere on this page.
- Open counts and ages.No date cutoff — every request the city’s system still marks open counts, so these numbers reconcile with the city’s dashboard.
- Median days to close (headline).Requests submitted since 2022 that have closed. Shown citywide only: a per-area close median mostly reflects when backlog cleanups happened there, and only counts finished work — so areas compare on the cohort rate below instead.
- Total outstanding wait.The sum of every open request’s age at each month boundary, in years (“ticket-years”). A backlog of 100 requests each two years old is 200 ticket-years. Rises when the backlog grows or ages; falls when long-waiting requests close.
- Share still open past one year.Of tickets filed since 2022 that are at least a year old, the share still open. Counts open and closed tickets together, so neither cleanup timing nor unfinished work distorts the comparison. One year is also the city’s current target for these requests. Areas with fewer than 25 qualifying tickets show no rate.
- Monthly close and on-time panels.Grouped by the month a request closed, including requests submitted before 2022. The current month is omitted until it’s complete.
- The city’s deadline.Per RVA311, each request’s due date is a department-level performance target set at filing — a workload-management figure that may be refined over time, not a per-request deadline published to or promised to the resident. The current target for these request types is 365 days, in effect since December 2022 (verified against the city’s data, August 2026); requests filed earlier carried shorter targets and are judged against the deadline in effect when they were filed. We publish on-time rates in aggregate only and don’t label individual requests as late, per the public exposure contract.
Full definitions: RVA311 methodology. Reference tables for all road and sidewalk request types: Roads & Sidewalks breakdown.
These citywide numbers are made of individual requests in specific neighborhoods.
Get new 311 requests in your neighborhood, daily.