How piles of snow paint a picture of what’s possible for city streets
As snow piles up, the street’s true use is revealed.

thestar.com
March 4, 2016
By Sarah-Joyce Battersby

Old man winter may have missed his calling.

Piles of snow can work like city planners, revealing the path to better road design, say advocates. In the white space that sticks in intersections, untouched by cars after a snowfall, they see bike lanes, wider sidewalks, and tree-filled traffic islands.

The snow piles are dubbed “sneckdowns,” a combination of “snow” and “neckdown,” a technical term for traffic-calming curb extensions.

“What the sneckdowns provide is a really clear visual picture that’s almost literally black and white, snow being white, of what’s possible,” said Adam Popper, project manager for the city’s Complete Streets initiative, which aims to design streets catering to all road users. “It’s an easy way to convey what a skilled street designer would see anyway.”

Though Popper says the city doesn’t use sneckdown data in any official capacity, advocates maintain the white spots help train the eyes of everyday road users.

“They are really a tool for amateurs - they're a phenomenon that can involve people outside transportation planning in designing our streets,” said Iain Campbell, founder of the Toronto Sneckdown Blog, in an email.

“It involves subjective decisions about the priority of different activities. Is the ability to drive fast more important than the ability to walk safely?”

For Gil Penalosa, founder of 880 Cities, a non-profit group dedicated in part to promoting walking and cycling, sneckdowns cut to the chase.

“It’s magnificent because people keep saying: we have to do a study, we have to invest, we have to do a plan. With this, we don’t have to do any study; we just have to go out and take some pictures,” he said.

Penalosa adds such photos can quiet one of the loudest criticisms about cutting into car dominance: the lack of space for other road users.

One big storm and “all of a sudden you realize there is plenty of space,” he said.

For Campbell, the only trouble is the fickle medium. With so little snow this winter, the submissions to his blog have slowed down.

“I’m certainly enjoying the warmer winter, but it has been a bit disappointing as far as sneckdowns are concerned,” he said.

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