Waco, TX Public Conduct: Skateboarding Rules (2026)

Section 25-9 of the Waco Code of Ordinances, part of Chapter 25's Article I general traffic rules, treats skateboards as a street hazard rather than a recreational allowance. Subsection (a) separately bars playing any game, sport or exercise in a street, highway or thoroughfare that is likely to injure passengers or interfere with traffic. Subsection (b) then names the devices at issue directly: no person on roller skates, or riding a coaster, skateboard, toy vehicle or similar device, may go upon any street in the city. The only carve-out is crossing a street on a marked crosswalk, and even then the skater is not free of traffic law: crossing grants the same rights pedestrians have at that crossing but also imposes on the skater every duty a pedestrian owes there, such as obeying crossing signals.

The section reaches only "streets," a term Section 25-1 defines as the entire publicly maintained way open to vehicular and pedestrian travel; it says nothing about sidewalks, parking lots or private property, so those surfaces are governed elsewhere in the code, if at all, not by Section 25-9. A cross-reference in the article ties it to the broader streets-and-sidewalks provisions of Chapter 22. The rule traces to the 1967 Code (§§ 32-3, 34-10) and has not been separately amended since, unlike neighboring sections updated as recently as 2018 for shared mobility devices.