Though the snow and ice can be a barrier for pedestrians and people with disabilities, it can also be a surprising indicator of the way people use the road, which could ultimately have long-term benefits for the very users hampered by the white stuff. When vehicles travel along roadways after a fresh snowfall, they carve out pathways that demonstrate the most well-used areas of the street. At the same time, they also highlight unused road space that could be taken back by pedestrians. A sneckdown, or snowy neckdown, is essentially a curb extension created by snowfall.

A sneckdown in Manhattan, image by Liz Patek via Wikimedia Commons

Sneckdowns encourage slower vehicle speeds, shorten pedestrian crossing times, and enable planners to understand where possible reconfigurations of the road structure can be made. As a natural form of traffic calming, sneckdowns easily demonstrate where permanent curb extensions can be implemented, thus narrowing the roadway. The term was coined by Streetsblog Founder Aaron Naparstek and popularized by Streetfilms Director Clarence Eckerson, Jr. Since its first recorded Twitter appearance in 2014, the hashtags #plowza, #slushdown, #snovered, and #snowspace have been used to describe these natural phenomena.

Sneckdowns demonstrate unused road space, image by Naparstek via Wikimedia Commons