Robin Riddle stands in the middle of Hawksbury Lane most Friday mornings, watching for cars as neighborhood children walk and bike toward Bluff Park Elementary School. She does it because of what happened once when she wasn't standing guard: two vehicles approached her and her 5-year-old daughter without slowing down, and she pushed the girl into a ditch to keep her from being hit.
That near-miss, which Riddle says happened in September 2022, is at the center of a renewed push by Bluff Park residents to get a sidewalk built on Hawksbury Lane, a narrow residential street in Hoover that connects homes to the elementary school, nearby parks, the pool and other community spaces, according to ABC 33/40. Riddle emailed Hoover police after the incident to request increased patrols during school drop-off and pickup, and the station reports officers did step up patrols in response, with a motorcycle officer later meeting with neighborhood children to go over pedestrian safety and the rules of the road.
Riddle told the station she knows of other close calls on the street, including another mother who had to push a stroller into a ditch as cars passed. For her, the fix is simple. ‘’A sidewalk would keep her children safe,’’ the outlet reports Riddle said, framing the request not as a luxury but as a basic safety concern.
A Petition and a Council Pitch
The push has moved beyond one family's story. Bluff Park resident Blake Westbrook raised the Hawksbury Lane sidewalk issue at a recent Hoover City Council meeting, telling council members the project should be treated as a child-safety need rather than an optional neighborhood improvement. At the September 28 meeting, per Citizen Portal, Westbrook said 27 children live along the block between Maiden Lane and Cloudland Drive, the same stretch covered by the sidewalk proposal residents are asking the city to fund.
A petition seeking the sidewalk had collected 360 signatures as of Thursday, the station notes. It arrives alongside a backdrop of heavy seasonal foot and car traffic in the area: the annual Bluff Park Art Show, held at Bluff Park Community Park on Cloudland Drive, draws an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 visitors each autumn to streets surrounding Hawksbury Lane, according to the City of Hoover. The event dates back to 1963, when it began as a fundraiser for the Bluff Park Elementary School library.
Why Hoover Hasn't Funded New Sidewalks
Hoover's engineering department has submitted the Hawksbury Lane project for consideration during each of the past three budget cycles, the station's report notes. The city evaluates sidewalk requests using factors including connectivity, terrain, drainage, utilities, ADA requirements, right-of-way needs, and cost against available funding, with nearby streets Cloudland Drive, Savoy Street and Maiden Lane all factoring into that review for Hawksbury Lane specifically.
For fiscal year 2027, the city funded about 36 percent of the capital requests it received, but no new sidewalk-construction projects made the cut. Instead, the city directed its available sidewalk funding toward repairs and maintenance of existing infrastructure, per the same account. The Hawksbury Lane project is also not part of Hoover's adopted bike and pedestrian plan, a status that affects how it's prioritized against other requests citywide.
That funding gap lines up with the city's broader financial picture. The Hoover City Council unanimously passed a $183 million General Fund operating budget for fiscal year 2027 on September 28, projecting revenue growth of just 0.4 percent year-over-year, according to the City of Hoover. Mayor Nick Derzis noted that flat revenues paired with rising operating expenses require strict spending discipline across city departments, a constraint that helps explain why new sidewalk construction was left out of this year's budget entirely.
Enforcement Now, Sidewalk Later?
Short of new concrete, the city has responded to speeding concerns on Hawksbury Lane with direct traffic enforcement, and officials say the sidewalk project could be considered again in future budget cycles. The council has separately moved on broader transportation planning: on August 24, it formally adopted Resolution Number 8930-26, establishing the city's Annual Transportation Plan for fiscal year 2027, a document that guides engineering reviews and street capital spending citywide, per the City of Hoover.
Hoover has leaned on federal cost-sharing before to get sidewalks built near schools. In May 2012, the council approved agreements with the Alabama Department of Transportation for Safe Routes to School funding under project SRTS-SR10(901) to design sidewalks near Bluff Park Elementary, work that eventually brought paved walkways to primary streets like Lester Lane and Cloudland Drive while leaving adjacent side streets, including Hawksbury Lane, unpaved. A 2016 sidewalk project along Preserve Parkway cost $270,400, with an 80 percent federal grant covering the bulk of it and the city contributing the remaining 20 percent, or $54,080, according to the Inverness Master Homeowners Association.
Until sidewalks or similar funding materializes, state law puts the burden squarely on pedestrians. Under Section 32-5A-215 of the Code of Alabama, people walking along a two-way roadway without sidewalks or shoulders are required to walk on the far-left side facing oncoming traffic and yield the right-of-way to vehicles, according to FindLaw. Statewide, more than 120 pedestrians were killed on Alabama roads in 2023, among the highest pedestrian fatality rates in the Southeast, per Caldwell Wenzel & Asthana Injury Lawyers.
Bluff Park Elementary, which sits on Park Avenue and enrolls roughly 580 to 650 students in grades K-5, feeds into Simmons Middle School and Hoover High School, according to Niche. For families along Hawksbury Lane, that walk to class remains, for now, a walk along a ditch rather than a sidewalk — with city officials saying the request will stay on the table for future budget cycles even as this year's funding went elsewhere.
