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Back in April, CB3 member Chad Marlow, and the group that he founded in 2011,
the Tompkins Square Park & Playground Parents’ Association (TSP3A), kicked off a neighborhood safety initiative.
The group applied to the Department of Transportation (DOT) to have them create what the group is calling the "Tompkins Square/Alphabet City Slow Zone" (TSACSZ).
The TSACSZ, in short, is an effort to improve pedestrian safety for children and all others who live/work/play in the proposed 0.38 square-mile zone by reducing motor vehicle speeds. Per Marlow, the slow zone program takes a well-defined, relatively compact area, and reduces its speed limit from 30 miles per hour to 20 miles per hour, with further reductions to 15 miles per hour near schools.
Now that I've buried the lead Marlow just learned today that the DOT has approved the Tompkins Square/Alphabet City Slow Zone. Per a DOT letter to Marlow, the implementation will take place some time in 2014.
In an op-ed in
The Villager last spring, Marlow also revealed a personal reason behind this proposal. In 1995, a drunken driver struck Marlow's father, an accident that left him with quadriplegia and a severe brain injury. His father died 13 years after the accident. (Read the entire op-ed
here.)
We asked Marlow via email for his reaction to the DOT's decision:
"I am beyond grateful to the Department of Transportation for approving the Tompkins Square/Alphabet City Slow Zone. I am equally filled with gratitude for all of the community groups, elected officials and members of Community Board 3, whose support for the proposal was instrumental in making it a reality. Most of all, I find myself thinking of my father, Richard Marlow, and how something positive has finally come out of the years of terrible pain and suffering he endured after being hit by a speeding, drunk driver in 1995. I dedicate this effort to his memory."
Previously on EV Grieve:
Call for an East Village 'slow zone' (34 comments)
