Richland County, SC Sidewalk & Pedestrian Rules: Sidewalk Repair (2026)

Sec. 21-22 assigns sidewalk responsibility to county government rather than adjoining property owners. It directs the director of public works to establish a systematic program for identifying, prioritizing, and implementing sidewalk construction, maintenance and improvement projects, and it fixes the program's principal focus as the safety of children walking to school, to school bus stops, or to neighborhood and public recreation facilities. That prioritization matters practically: a damaged sidewalk near a school route is more likely to reach the county's project list than one on a road with no school traffic.

The provision sits in Article I of Chapter 21 (Streets, Sidewalks and Other Public Ways), the same article that governs drainage, road paving and right-of-way easements, and it was carried into the current code by Ord. No. 005-03HR in 2003 and amended by Ord. No. 001-13HR in 2013. Because the ordinance frames sidewalks as a county-run program rather than an individual duty, there is no separate notice-and-repair mechanism, deadline, or lien process directed at property owners for sidewalk defects in the unincorporated area; residents who spot a broken or missing sidewalk section report it to the public works department for inclusion in the prioritization process rather than facing an obligation to fix it themselves.

Sidewalks built as part of new subdivisions are separately governed by the county's Land Development Code and any recorded plat conditions, which sit outside this chapter.