HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — After nearly a year of trying to get help for a bad stretch of sidewalk, a Gibsonton man reached out to Spectrum Bay News 9 Real Time Traffic Expert Chuck Henson for help.

It's so bad that during a recent phone conversation with Hillsborough County about the needed repairs a young girl fell off her bike and the county representative heard it on the call.

Yet, repairs have still not come and neighborhood frustration is at an all-time high.


What You Need To Know

  • Residents have spent a year trying to get a sidewalk repaired

  • County suggets residents use the other side of the street

  • Mobility scooters, bicycles have trouble getting through the patch

Chris Babik was the man making that call.

"And he could hear it from my house,” Babik said. “On the phone, he heard the scraping of the bicycle.  I told him, yeah that's somebody that's just went off the road on a bicycle."

And that's just the beginning.

The area in question is East Bay Road between Nundy Ave. and Symmes Road in Gibsonton. The ground has washed out under newly replaced concrete eventually causing more cracks in the surface.

"I've been told, these sidewalks right here are actually put in wrong, that the asphalt should meet the sidewalk, so you don't have these big trenches between the sidewalk and the road,” Babik said. “It's dangerous.  People go off the road, the next thing you know they're off the sidewalk into the ditch which is creating more and more of these problems."

Babik has seen military veterans in mobility scooters trip and too many falls to count from pedestrians.

After a year of trying to get repairs made, the county offered this suggestion: Well, Mr. Babik, unfortunately there's a perfectly good sidewalk across the street that the people can use.

While it's not out of the question to use the other side, it's not as easy as it sounds. Chris said in the morning it can take him 4-5 minutes just to get out of his driveway.

The road is very busy and putting kids on bikes and seniors on scooters out in that traffic with no safe crosswalks isn't a good idea at all.