To South Orange leadership:

We bought our home on Vose Avenue in 2022 knowing full well that living on a busy street was a trade-off for being in the heartbeat of town. Vose Avenue is a pedestrian thoroughfare not just to downtown, but between Marshall, SOMS, the Baird, the Meadowlands, utilized by daily commuters, Daycare toddlers tethered to rope lines, middle schoolers, elementary kiddos, summer campers, Jespy House members and the elderly who live at the Jewish Federation.  I see my neighbors commute and watch their families grow each day from my home. I also watch gas lamps downed, curbs hopped, side mirrors clipped and pets flattened on the road. Speed control measures on Scotland have made Vose Avenue the preferred road for speeding drivers. Vose Ave is part of a monthly racing circuit where cars scream up and down our street in the middle of the night on Saturdays.  Vose is a mile stretch of uninterrupted road where cars regularly drive double the 25mph speed limit with no enforcement.  Between the unchecked speeding and the poor lighting at night, conditions here are incompatible with pedestrian safety. 

Around 9:30 PM Thursday, my husband, Stephen Miranda, entered the crosswalk at Mead and Vose just feet from our house, where he was struck by a speeding driver going north on Vose, turning left on Mead. The car clipped his leg and Steve jumped on the hood and fell to the ground. The car sped away as Steve lay in the crosswalk. Thankfully, Steve is unbroken, just slightly traumatized and very sore. But it could have been so much worse. There is a police report on file. Shout out to the wonderful South Orange Rescue Squad. 

I reached out to my neighbors to start a petition and what I learned next was even more enraging than having my husband nearly mowed down: mine would be just the latest of many petitions that have gone unanswered for 25 years. Twenty five years! How can this be? 

I’m asking the town council for their intervention because my neighbors’ efforts to get the Town engineers to address these safety issues have gone nowhere and for too long.  My neighbors have filed police reports, complaints, answered the safety surveys, petitioned and done all the legwork, and yet the traffic studies result in zero action. This is wildly unacceptable.

The homeowners on Vose, the adjacent neighbors deserve to know exactly why the township has done nothing all these years. We would like to know why, of all the tools in the speed-curbing toolbox: speed bumps, speed humps, speed tables, rumble strips, three-way stop signs, police enforcement , and anything else not on this list- why none have been implemented. 

We deserve to know what is being prioritized over our safety. 

We urge you to help us prevent future tragedy, to keep our children safe and our families whole.  

We all know that reckless driving  is not limited to Vose, that it’s a SOMA-wide issue. Vose Avenue is overdue for real solutions. 

We look forward to your response, 

Amy Brown of 205 Vose Ave, with help from my amazing neighbors, many of whom will have signed in support.