Have you ever heard of a sneckdown? Or even a neckdown? I just got a fascinating email with a great diagram pointing out that snow reveals patterns of street use:

Walking (and maybe even biking, you brave soul!) through the slush these past few weeks, you may have spotted a pattern: a tire-marked path through the snow surrounded by untouched white.

The phenomenon was first branded a “sneckdown” by T.A. activists in 2001. It’s a neckdown of untrod or plow-piled snow. (If you left your urban planning manual at home, a neckdown is when the width of a street at an intersection is made narrower to calm traffic.)

Drive-lines provide a clear message about how streets can work better. The prospect of wider sidewalks, new public plazas and bike lanes are revealed in the space where no one has driven.

And psychologically, wider streets mean more dangerous driving:

The wider a street, the safer drivers feel exceeding the speed limit. Streets narrowed by snow have the opposite effect, encouraging drivers to behave. Where normally drivers are jockeying for position, snow banks both sides of the street keep drivers in line and in their lane, demonstrating how narrow the street could be.

More on the subject can be found here, at the Economist, or on Twitter at #sneckdown.
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