By NEAL WAGNER / City Editor

Pelham Mayor Don Murphy recently signed a contract to begin work on new sidewalks along Bearden Road from its intersection with Industrial Park Drive to Pelham High School.

The project also will include sidewalks on Industrial Park Drive between U.S. 31 and Bearden Road.

During a June 4 City Council meeting, Murphy announced crews will be working on the project over the next few years before likely completing it in 2015.

“That’s a project I’m glad to see going on. It’s been too long getting here,” Murphy said.

During a February meeting, the Pelham City Council voted unanimously to pay a total of $211,000 over the next three years to match a more than $1 million Birmingham Metropolitan Planning Organization grant to fund the project.

Pelham officials previously said the city will pay grant matches of $40,000 this year, $20,000 in 2013 and about $151,000 in 2015. Murphy said crews would conduct engineering studies of the project in 2012, would prepare the work site in 2013 and 2014 and would construct most of the sidewalks in 2015.

Murphy and council members previously said the sidewalks will help PHS students and parents and Pelham residents walking along the road to stay safe. Fourteen-year-old PHS student Tyler Lee was struck by a vehicle and seriously injured when he was walking along Bearden Road in August 2011.