What does snow tell us about our streets? Spoiler alert- they're too wide, so how can we give space back to the people?

In my last article about walkability, I made the claim that our streets are too wide, and that wide streets are inherently bad for walkability because they encourage people to drive too fast and become a massive risk to pedestrians and cyclists alike. Although "fat streets" are something recognized by many transportation professionals (Pete Buttigieg, for

 example), the idea may be hard to conceptualize. 

Thankfully, snow gives us the tools we need to put this idea into perspective.

I love snow. It's pretty, fun to play in, and sometimes even gets you the day off of school. If you like to snowboard or ski like me, snow is a gift from God that gives you the powder days you dream of. But transportation and new urbanism nerds like me love snow for another reason- they provide direct, visible evidence that our streets are simply too wide. 

So, then, let's talk about what we call sneckdowns. If you're familiar with traffic calming (speed bumps, bollards, raised crosswalks, curb extensions, etc), a "neckdown" is really just another word for traffic calming. Thus, a "sneckdown" is a "snowy neckdown"- that is, traffic calming that is formed naturally through snow.

Not only are sneckdowns interesting as a natural traffic calming measure, they are also amazing tools that show us where we can install permanent traffic calming devices. This infrastructure, as I argued in my last article, is crucial to making places more human-centered and walkable. They also provide clear evidence of which streets are too wide.

If you live in Ohio, chances are you got absolutely hammered with snow in the past week (my parents got 20 inches of snow). The blizzard was so bad that the Greater Cleveland RTA actually had to suspend bus and rail service because they had more than 50 busses that were stuck in the snow and needed rescued.

Once again, mother nature dumped snow on Central Ohio/ Columbus last night. One of my good friends and I headed to the bus stop to go to Bob Evans' to grab brunch. Armed with my knowledge of sneckdowns, I set out with him to find examples of these natural traffic calming devices to provide strong, tangible evidence that our roads really could use a diet. Once you see them, you might not think I'm crazy after all. 

What the heck do I mean by "sneckdown"? Examples. 

Take a look at the pictures below. The yellow line in each one represents where the curb is located. 

Image 1: Looking west on E Lane Ave

The yellow line is placed on top of the curb.

Image 2: Looking east on East Lane Ave

The yellow line is placed on top of the curb.

Image 3: Looking east at the intersection of High St and Lane Ave

The yellow line is placed on top of the curb

Let's talk about this

As you can see, in each of the pictures above, there is a substantial part of road covered with snow between the curb and the plowed road surface. This is a sneckdown. Notice how in each of the sneckdowns, there are NO tire tracks. People are not driving in that space. In photo 2, you'll notice that people are still driving in the curbside lane, but again, they are not driving in the sneckdown. They are not driving on top of the lane line either- they are staying in their lane. This road is simply wider than it needs to be for vehicles to traverse it. The sneckdown proves this. The part of the road covered in snow is simply wasted space that should be given back to the people.

Keep in mind that in all of the photos above, the amount of wasted space is actually quadruple the total area of the sneckdown. This is because each of the roads are four lanes (two in each direction), so in theory, assuming the lanes are of equal width, the area of the sneckdown could be removed from each lane of travel, and the road could still be two lanes each way. 

I find images 1 and 2 especially powerful. They show that there is three-ish feet of the space in the curb lane that is completely unnecessarily allocated to cars. And as I mentioned above, the amount of space wasted is actually quadruple (approximately 12 feet), assuming the lanes are the same width (and I can't imagine why they wouldn't be at least close). This is valuable space that can be used to make E. Lane Ave more friendly to cyclists and pedestrians alike. 

So how can we make these streets better?

Lane Ave

The images below give you an idea of how this may look. Once again, I am not a graphic designer, but I think these Microsoft Paint "renderings" give you the idea. 

Lane Ave Improvement 1: Bike Lanes

A bike lane could easily be added in this space. Notice that the bike lane does not actually get narrower as; this is just the perspective of the image. Lines farther away from where the photo was taken look farther apart, but they aren't 

This image shows that is would be very possible to give cyclists their own space here, potentially without even removing a lane of automobile traffic. Note that the image seems to show that the lane gets narrower as we get farther away, but this is just the perspective of the photograph (pairs of lines grow closer together as the distance increases).

Lane Ave improvement 2: Widen the sidewalk, add trees

Note that the boundary between the grey and green areas is the current curb

Another option could be to make the sidewalk much wider and add trees on the newly expanded "devils strip". I don't know about you, but this crappy Microsoft Paint rendering to me already makes this corridor feel more walkable than it is currently. 

Lane Ave improvement 3: Keep current sidewalk length, add bike lane and trees

This option is the same as the first one, except we add trees to the "devils strip", which not only provide the physical separation and physical barrier craved by the pedestrian, but provides shade in the summer, so we don't die from heat exhaustion when we want to go grab Chipotle.

High Street and Lane Ave Intersection

In image 3, you'll notice that this is where vehicles turn. In the last article, I talked about how "boxier" intersections are inherently safer for pedestrians because they encourage motorists to make the turn with more caution.  Image 3 shows that we can easily extend the sidewalks, reducing the distance pedestrians must walk to get to the other side, and encourage motorists to slow down to look for pedestrians. All of this makes a place more walkable. 

As we were standing at the location of image 3, my friend brought up the point that we could extend the sidewalks, but this might result in car tires scraping the curve whenever they round the corner. Valid point. But when we observed cars making the turn, NONE of them were even close to touching the sneckdown. They were driving in a space that was even further outside of the sneckdown than was explicitly necessary to avoid driving over snow. All of this is to say that we can widen the sidewalks here without cars constantly hitting the curb. The image below gives you an idea of how it might look.

High Street intersection improvement: widen the sidewalks to shorten crossing distance

Here, the grey area represents a potential sidewalk extension. Not only will this shorten the crossing distance for pedestrians, it will also give a more "boxy" intersection design, which will be much more comfortable for pedestrians.

Quick note on semis

You might be thinking "what about the semis?". Well, this is a valid point, but it is preposterous to apply this argument to every possible pedestrian/cyclist improvement. Semis do not drive on every road in our city. In fact, they drive on few of them. There would never be a reason for a semi to drive on East Lane Ave, as there are only houses here, and there are plenty of more suitable routes for them to take. So don't get lost in this argument if you hear it. It doesn't make sense to plan all streets for semis when cities are for people, not semis. We need semis, of course, but not every single street needs to be planned for them. 

Final thoughts: have the courage to give unnecessary space on our streets back to the people

Sneckdowns are awesome, because they give us a glimpse of how our built environment can be improved. They show us areas where the street is unnecessarily wide, and how we can give space back to the people of our city.

The images above I think are very convincing. They show what is possible if we reallocated this unnecessary space to humans. But we need to have the courage to do this. It will not hinder automobile drivers. Driving a bit slower due to the narrower street for 500 feet will make you get to where you need to go like 5 seconds later than otherwise. In fact, reducing your speed from 25 mph to 20 mph reduces the likelihood that a pedestrian crash is fatal by roughly 15 percentage points, and will take you just 3.35 seconds longer (see the appendix for the math; Tefft, 2011). With this in mind, does it really make sense to keep our streets unnecessarily wide?

Now that you are armed with the knowledge of sneckdowns, go out into your community and figure out where we can give space back to the people! Let people know, too. Together, we can win the fight for more livable, walkable, bikeable streets and communities. 

Appendix

Sources:

Tefft, B.C. (2011). Impact Speed and a Pedestrian’s Risk of Severe Injury or Death (Technical Report). Washington, D.C.: AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.