#urabn design

Want Safer Streets? Take Design Cues From the Snow

Skinnier lanes, longer curbs, and speed humps slow down drivers. But building safer streets usually requires persistent demands from safety-minded citizens, and fistfuls of hard-won tax dollars from authorities. “Traffic calming” strategies rarely happen overnight… unless it’s winter.

Enter the “sneckdown”: When a snowstorm fills up wasted street space with the white stuff, everyone gets a lesson in how to dramatically reduce car speeds. It’s like nature blanketing the city with curb extensions overnight.

TheMuppet-esque portmanteau mashes up “snow” and “neckdown,” an engineering term for a sidewalk extension or street island designed to damper drivers. Snowbanks accumulate on the paved space where people don’t drive or park, revealing “streets we have overbuilt so a car driver can go faster and more recklessly,” according to Clarence Eckerson, the director of video production at STREETFILMS. Imagine if street engineers took a nod from Mother Nature, and repurposed even half of that whited-out space with room for walkers and cyclists—you’d have slower, less dangerous, roads. Sneckdowns are “a very visual way to make the argument,” Eckerson says. [Full article]

Source:Sneckdown Calgary,City Lab