More Than A "Sneckdown"
What snowstorms can teach us about the role of cars in the built environment
I wrote about “sneckdowns” the other week: the term for the narrowed roadways that result from snowstorms and plowing, and how they reveal how much asphalted space isn’t really necessary for roads to function or for traffic to move. The idea is that this “extra” space could be allocated to sidewalks, bike lanes, outdoor seating, landscaping, etc., without that much of a loss in roadway capacity:
The snow shows us the spaces that the cars really use, and therefore underscores how much road space is not strictly necessary for the movement of traffic. It’s a related sort of thing to dusting a pan with flour and watching for scorched spots, which will tell you if your stove/pan has hotspots or uneven heating. It’s a kind of way to map space. (Mapping, as a general question, is interesting to me.)
My pictures are not great at illustrating the specific idea of what road space is strictly necessary and what could be allocated to other uses. But you get the idea.
Of course, this would slow down traffic. But it isn’t about narrowing roads, per se—it doesn’t mean taking away lanes but slimming down the overall asphalted space. And obviously either narrowing or slowing roads should be paired with making other ways of getting around easier.
Look at this, for example:
That is how wide the sidewalk could be!
With the long-lasting “snowcrete” we have here in the Washington, D.C. area, these snow-induced reductions in roadway space have gone on now for well over a week. What I’ve been thinking about this week is that in some ways, the “sneckdown” explanation almost understates what these snowstorms show us about urban space.
They’re not just a way to visualize how you could accommodate a bike lane or a wider sidewalk. They’re a little glimpse at what a built environment that was not designed with total car orientation in mind might have looked like.
What I mean is that the total effect of the snow—reducing roadway space, slowing down cars, making you think twice about driving somewhere—turns driving into something more deliberate, not just the automatic way of getting around. It gives us a taste of the psychology of living in a world where the car is not the default.
It’s not just roads. The parking lots also lose quite a few spaces to the piled up snow. The snow does not obey minimum parking requirements. Yet the loss of whatever percentage of parking—maybe 10 percent—rarely ever causes any problem.
Sure, that space in theory could be repurposed for something else, like outdoor dining for restaurants that use the lot. But more importantly than that, that space never needed to be developed for parking at all. Repurposing it after the fact is the best we may ever get with these properties in the suburbs, but what really could have happened is that we had more buildings, closer together, and less asphalted space. That we built a more productive, enterprising landscape more full of opportunity and less full of dead space.
Where the snow sits and isn’t urgently moved is a kind of map of the underutilized spaces in our built environment.
Of course, a tighter built environment—like in old downtowns—poses its own snow removal issues. And of course the pedestrian paths and sidewalks are also covered over, so in reality the snow imposes caution or disruption on mobility of all sorts. And it’s typically roadways that are plowed first, with sidewalks or bike lanes coming later.
But you can imagine a world where the reduction in automobile-oriented space is permanent—that is, where the slower pace and heightened awareness of post-snowstorm driving is simply driving—while the ease of walking or biking is restored or enhanced.
This isn’t a world without cars. It’s not even a world where alternative modes of transportation are the easiest or most frictionless. But it’s a world where the car is not completely dominant: not the default or automatic method of getting around, or at least not used without a bit of pause and a conscious choice. And, importantly, it is perfectly workable in suburbia, because suburbanites endure it every winter and nothing much changes.
Motorists do not need to give up all that much convenience in order to make more room for everything else, because so much space is devoted to cars, far more than is basically ever needed. But once it’s asphalted over, it’s locked down. The snow shows us that it never had to be, and as to what we could have done instead, the sky is the limit.
Related Reading:
Friction, Distance, Incidental Activities
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"That is how wide the sidewalk could be!"
Sure: if school is closed, employers are letting people telework, and people are limiting their shopping and leisure activities.
"nothing much changes."
Critical facilities have employees sleep onsite and stockpile provisions. Schools are closed, leaving working parents scrambling. People stock up on food in advance, eliminating many shopping trips. These are all major changes!
People CAN adapt to reductions in transport capacity for short periods. But it isn't without (significant!) cost, and it doesn't say anything about whether such adaptations are sustainable outside of occasional, brief emergencies.