Notes / 311 / Street trees
How is the city doing with street trees?
Data through August 13, 2026· collected daily from the city’s records
2,182 tree maintenance requests are open. The median one was submitted in August 2025. That’s down from 2,581 a year ago. Requests that did close took a median of 69 days.
The city’s “Assess Existing Tree or Stump” service — maintenance of street trees and stumps handled by Public Works. Every number traces to the individual requests.
Open requests over time
Open tree maintenance 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: 2,688 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 tree maintenance 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 21 to 608 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 Fan2149%245d
- The Museum District978%309d
- Colonial Place8617%1.3y
- Malvern Gardens7722%1.3y
- Bellevue7110%1.1y
- Windsor Farms6719%1.0y
- Woodland Heights6618%1.5y
- Ginter Park585%267d
- Church Hill516%268d
- Oak Grove5018%359d
- Sauer's Gardens4920%1.2y
- Three Chopt4619%1.0y
- North Highland Park406%321d
- Reedy Creek3923%1.2y
- Northern Barton Heights386%1.0y
118 neighborhoods have open tree maintenance requests; the list shows 15 at a time, ranked by the sorted column. 124 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 July 31, 2018.
- 20183
- 20196
- 20203
- 202125
- 202218
- 2023268
- 2024351
- 2025682
- 2026826
37 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 tree maintenance requests. Each links to our record page, which links to the request on the city’s RVA311 portal.
| Submitted | Type | Location | Neighborhood | District |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 31, 2018 | Standard Tree Maintenance | 4706 W Grace St 23230 | Monument Avenue Park | 1 |
| November 1, 2018 | Standard Tree Maintenance | 2000 Conrad St 23223 | Whitcomb | 6 |
| December 23, 2018 | Emergency/Storm Tree Maintenance | 812 W 44th St 23225 | Forest Hill Terrace | 5 |
| April 1, 2019 | Standard Tree Maintenance | 2304 Hildreth St 23223 | Whitcomb | 6 |
| July 26, 2019 | Standard Tree Maintenance | 2201 Stuart Ave 23220 | The Fan | 2 |
| September 3, 2019 | Standard Tree Maintenance | 1717 Lakeview Ave 23220 | Randolph | 5 |
| September 23, 2019 | Standard Tree Maintenance | 717 W 33rd St 23225 | Woodland Heights | 5 |
| October 30, 2019 | Standard Tree Maintenance | 1500 N 19th st and Brauers Lane | Brauers | 7 |
| October 31, 2019 | Emergency/Storm Tree Maintenance | 725 Northside Ave | Highland Terrace | 6 |
| March 29, 2020 | Standard Tree Maintenance | 6313 Kensington Ave, 23226 | Three Chopt | 1 |
Browse every tree maintenance request, filterable by neighborhood and status
Methodology
- Scope.Requests to Public Works under the city’s “Assess Existing Tree or Stump” service — subtypes Standard Tree Maintenance, Emergency/Storm Tree Maintenance, the finest grain the city's 311 taxonomy has. The Emergency/Storm subtype has had no new requests since October 2020; new requests all file as Standard. Adjacent request types are separate services and not counted here: New Tree Planting, Brush/Tree Obstruction, and the sight-obstruction reports (Line of Sight Obscured, Traffic Sign Obscured, Traffic Signal Obscured). 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 requests is 365 days, unchanged since the city began setting due dates in March 2021 (verified against the city’s data, August 2026); requests filed earlier — including every request under the storm subtype — carry no due date in the city’s system, so they’re excluded from on-time rates. 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 tree and vegetation request types: Trees & Vegetation breakdown.
These citywide numbers are made of individual requests in specific neighborhoods.
Get new 311 requests in your neighborhood, daily.