A Planner’s Reason to Celebrate Snow: Sneckdowns

By Betsy Logan, AICP

Looking for an inexpensive way to determine where traffic calming measures can be installed in your community?  Sneckdowns may offer a solution.  Combining the words snow and neckdowns, sneckdowns are the unused area of streets where snow accumulates along curbs, intersections, and travel lanes, revealing where travel movements are not occurring.  These natural snow patterns illustrate excess road space, highlighting areas for infrastructure improvement. 

These unused areas can serve as guidelines for future traffic calming measures and enhancements. Pedestrian refuge spaces can be created by adding medians. Narrowing automobile travel lanes provides space for bike lanes. Extended curbs can reduce pedestrian crossing distances or form small public plazas. Sneckdowns are nature’s planning tool, allowing communities to reimagine their streetscapes to prioritize safety, accessibility, and livability while saving costs for implementation instead of design.