diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.2.0.rst b/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.2.0.rst
index ade87c4215a38..ce16c8ced28b9 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.2.0.rst
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.2.0.rst
@@ -572,6 +572,7 @@ I/O
 - Bug in :meth:`DataFrame.to_hdf` and :func:`read_hdf` with ``datetime64`` dtypes with non-nanosecond resolution failing to round-trip correctly (:issue:`55622`)
 - Bug in :meth:`pandas.read_excel` with ``engine="odf"`` (``ods`` files) when string contains annotation (:issue:`55200`)
 - Bug in :meth:`pandas.read_excel` with an ODS file without cached formatted cell for float values (:issue:`55219`)
+- Bug where :meth:`DataFrame.to_csv` would raise a ``URLError`` when specifying local file scheme paths to not-yet-created files (:issue:`55828`)
 - Bug where :meth:`DataFrame.to_json` would raise an ``OverflowError`` instead of a ``TypeError`` with unsupported NumPy types (:issue:`55403`)
 
 Period
diff --git a/pandas/io/common.py b/pandas/io/common.py
index d08612f4f09f6..d65b0c8bcb77b 100644
--- a/pandas/io/common.py
+++ b/pandas/io/common.py
@@ -382,6 +382,19 @@ def _get_filepath_or_buffer(
         # urlopen function defined elsewhere in this module
         import urllib.request
 
+        # Fix for GH #55828
+        parsed_url = parse_url(filepath_or_buffer)
+        if parsed_url.scheme == "file":
+            file_path = urllib.request.url2pathname(parsed_url.path)
+            file_path = os.path.normpath(file_path)
+            return IOArgs(
+                filepath_or_buffer=open(file_path, "rb"),
+                encoding=encoding,
+                compression=compression,
+                should_close=True,
+                mode=fsspec_mode,
+            )
+
         # assuming storage_options is to be interpreted as headers
         req_info = urllib.request.Request(filepath_or_buffer, headers=storage_options)
         with urlopen(req_info) as req: