Burlington, NC Public Conduct: Skateboarding Rules (2026)

City Code Section 23-7 defines a "motive device propelled or designed for propulsion by human power" to cover roller skates, roller blades, skateboards, scooters, coasters, hover boards, sleds and wagons, while expressly excluding strollers, wheelchairs, bicycles, tricycles and segways, which are governed elsewhere (see the bicycles-on-sidewalks cross reference at Section 36-2). Inside the central business district, defined as the area bounded by Fifth Street on the west, Lexington Avenue on the south, Webb Avenue on the east and Church Street on the north, the ordinance flatly bars operating, riding or using any of these devices on public sidewalks, in public parks, in city-owned vehicular areas, or on the grounds of the municipal building or a municipal parking facility.

Outside the central business district the rule shifts from a ban to a duty of care: riders on any street must keep to the right-hand portion of the roadway and yield to pedestrians and vehicles, while riders on sidewalks outside downtown must avoid reckless operation, exercise due care and yield the right-of-way to pedestrians. The section also requires riders to use safety equipment, specifically helmets, elbow pads, kneepads and wrist guards, whenever they are on a street. In city parks outside downtown, skates, skateboards, scooters and similar personal transportation devices are barred from high pedestrian traffic areas wherever signs have been posted designating that restriction.

The ordinance was adopted by Ordinance No. 97-5 in 1997 and carried forward in the city's 2018 Municode recodification. Enforcement falls to the Burlington Police Department, and any violation, whether the downtown ban, the reckless-operation standard or the missing safety gear, draws a flat twenty-five dollar civil penalty payable to the city tax collector's office within ten days of receipt; unpaid penalties can be pursued through civil collection and carry a twenty-five dollar late fee, and repeated violations are charged as separate, successive offenses.