Is My Sidewalk Mine to Fix?

Your block's sidewalk score and lifted-slab count from the city's own survey — and who actually has to fix it, which in South Bend is not the city.

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Whose job is it?

Your sidewalk is your responsibility

Chapter 18, Article 3 of the South Bend Municipal Code puts the maintenance and repair of the curb and the sidewalk on the abutting property owner — the person whose property the walk runs past, not the city. That is true of a cracked slab, a root-lifted panel and a curb the plough clipped. It is why a low score on this page is not a job in a queue somewhere: nobody is coming to do it unless you arrange it. The city's answer is not to do the work but to pay a published share of it, which is the next section.

311: Curb & Sidewalk Reimbursement Program

What the city pays towards it

Curb & Sidewalk Reimbursement Program — The city reimburses property owners who hire a licensed, bonded contractor to replace their own curb, sidewalk or ADA ramp, at a published rate per linear foot. Homeowners get double the rate inside the three target areas the city picks each year on household income and sidewalk condition. Businesses, churches and schools qualify at the lower rate and are capped at 250 linear feet of curb and sidewalk combined. The order matters: get the estimate and the city's pre-approval first — work started before approval is not reimbursed.

Work	Reimbursement
Sidewalk — homeowner	$20 per linear foot
Sidewalk — homeowner in a target area	$40 per linear foot
Sidewalk — business, church, school	$10 per linear foot
Curb — homeowner	$15 per linear foot
Curb — homeowner in a target area	$30 per linear foot
Curb — business, church, school	$7.50 per linear foot
ADA curb ramp — anyone	$950 per ramp

This year’s deadline is November 6, 2026 — 25 days away. That is the date the finished reimbursement form, signed by your contractor, has to be with the Engineering Office — so the work itself has to be done and inspected before it, not on it.

The programme's six steps, and the target-area maps · 574-235-9254 · PWPrograms@southbendin.gov

What the score means

The Sidewalk Condition Index runs 0 to 100 and comes from measured damage — cracking, surface distortion, and the lifted slabs a surveyor counts one by one. The seven bands below are the survey’s own published legend, the same ones its map is coloured with.

Score	Band	What that looks like underfoot
86–100	Excellent	New or nearly new. Flat, with little or no damage.
71–85	Good	Sound. Minor cracking, nothing that catches a foot.
56–70	Fair	Worn, with visible cracking and the odd lifted edge.
41–55	Poor	Uneven. Lifted slabs and cracking across much of the walk.
26–40	Very poor	Badly broken. Hard going with a stroller or a walker.
11–25	Serious	Failing. Large sections broken up or displaced.
0–10	Failed	The walk has failed. Slabs missing, gone, or impassable.

How the whole town scores

The same survey, for every stretch of walk in town. This is the comparison worth having — whether the walk outside your house is unusual or ordinary here.

17,431

Stretches surveyed

52.3

Average score

Surveyed August 2023

168,674

Lifted slabs counted

Each one is a raised edge a surveyor stopped and recorded.

10,367

Recommended for rebuilding

59.5% of every stretch surveyed

702.4 miles

Length surveyed

Street type	Stretches	Average score	Miles
Local	12,844	51.1	509
Minor Collector	762	52	29.4
Major Collector	1,375	52.5	58.6
Minor Arterial	1,408	55.5	60.4
Collector	61	56.8	3.2
Principal Arterial

Worth knowing

In winter it is yours within 24 hours

The same ordinance that makes the walk yours to repair makes it yours to clear. Municipal Code Section 18-7 gives an owner or occupant 24 hours after snow or ice stops falling to clear the public sidewalk, and Neighborhood Services & Enforcement can ticket for each day it stays covered — inspectors start with the blocks around schools, downtown, and the main corridors (Lincolnway, Main, Western, Portage). In a city that averages around 64 inches of snow a year that is not a rare obligation. Owners who cannot physically do it can file a Snow Removal Disability Exemption and Waiver of Liability, which stops the citations; the duty itself stays with the property.

311: Snow Removal Regulations

The survey is from 2023, and it is the newer half of the story

The sidewalk survey was walked in August 2023. The city's pavement survey — the one behind the street-condition page — was driven in June and July 2025, two years later. So a street can carry a fresh road score and a stale walk score on this site, and they are not measuring the same summer. Nothing that has lifted, cracked or been replaced since August 2023 is in these numbers.

City of South Bend — Streets

What a lifted slab count is actually telling you

The score is a summary; the uplift count is the specific thing. A surveyor stopped at each raised edge and recorded it, and graded some of them severe. A stretch can score respectably and still hold a dozen of them, and it is the uplifts — not the cracking — that catch a toe, a walker, a stroller wheel or a wheelchair castor. Where a stretch is narrower than four feet it is also below the clear width the federal accessibility guidelines set for a public walk, whatever its surface is like.

How to read this

Every score on this page comes from a survey walked on a particular day, and each stretch says which. A slab that lifted after that day is not in it. This page is a record of a survey, not a live picture of the pavement.

The layer carries two numbers where it can: what the surveyor measured on the day, and a current index the survey platform maintains. We show the current index, and the measured one beside it where the two have moved apart.

A recommendation is what the survey’s engineers judged the stretch needed. It is not a scheduled job, not a budget commitment, and not a promise that anything will happen — least of all where the repair is not the town’s to make.

A street missing from the survey is not necessarily a street with no walk, and a walk in the survey is not necessarily one the public may use. State highways, private drives and campus paths are surveyed by other people or by nobody.

Sidewalk condition survey published by the City of South Bend. City of South Bend — Public Works — the city's own streets and sidewalk programme pages

Band	Stretches	Share
Excellent	4,579	26.3%
Good	1,451	8.3%
Fair	1,750	10.1%
Poor	2,514	14.5%
Very poor	2,006	11.5%
Serious	2,624	15.1%
Failed	2,467	14.2%