You're getting a sneckdown! We're getting a sneckdown! The mayor's even getting a sneckdown (now that he knows what it is)!
Sunday's forecast for a snowpocalypse need not be a reason for bitter dismay over our roads, but, instead, a call for better design of our roads. And Mayor Mamdani said on Friday that he's open to letting Mother Nature (and his own snowplows) show him the way of the sneckdown.
What am I talking about? Return with me to Mayor Mamdani's snow preparation press conference on Friday morning. I raised an important question with Hizzoner:
Streetsblog: Do you know what a sneckdown is?
Mamdani: Sneckdown?
Streetsblog: Sneckdown.
Mamdani: To be honest with you, I don't know what a sneckdown is.
Fortunately, the mayor is a quick study. I explained that a sneckdown is a portmanteau of two words: snow, which is familiar enough, and neckdown, which describes a piece of concrete infrastructure that narrows a street in order to calm traffic and protect pedestrians. They're also known as curb extensions, bulb-outs, pinch points or chokers.
Big snowstorms tend to reveal huge swaths of public space that drivers simply don't use — they appear as piles of snow and show us all exactly where neckdowns could easily be built. Hence, "sneckdown."
Here are two examples:
"I know where you're going with this," Mamdani interrupted, before agreeing with my premise that sneckdowns could be a super-simple planning tool for the Department of Transportation.
"This is something now for us to follow up on," he said. "I think that one part of your question is also about street safety, and I think that is a critical directive that we have for our DOT is, how do we make our streets the envy of the world? And I look forward to any of the medium and long term lessons we can learn from this weekend about street design."
So send us your sneckdown photos throughout the snowstorm ("before" shots would be appreciated, too) and we'll pass them onto the mayor (though, obviously, Marcia Kramer is a bit better at showing the mayor pictures on her phone). (Email, Twitter or Bluesky is best.)
The mayor may be a little late to the sneckdown party, but he's had a longstanding invitation. The concept of the sneckdown apparently dates back to 2001, when Transportation Alternatives posted on an old website (now just a 404 error), "The next time someone tells you that you can't have a neckdown on a corner because there's not enough room, show them what happens every year when it snows."
But it was Streetfilms auteur (and U.N.-award-winning filmmaker) Clarence Eckerson Jr. who has been single-mindedly championing the "sneckdown" as a demonstration of how much space we give to car drivers that they don't even use.
"The snow is almost like nature's tracing paper," he told the BBC more than a decade ago. "It's free. You don't have to do a crazy expensive traffic calming study. It provides a visual cue into how people behave."
And as Eckerson shows in one of his Streetfilms, the presence of a sneckdown doesn't merely create more space for pedestrians, but also encourages drivers to slow down long after roadways themselves are clear:
So let's help DOT create world-class streets by showing them how many corners could easily be made safer from car drivers — with drivers not even noticing.
At the very least, let's just keep saying, "Sneckdown," because it's fun.
And also, let's remember to dress warmly and enjoy Sunday's (and hopefully Monday's) snow day.
— with Gersh "Sneckdown" Kuntzman and Clarence "Sneckdown" Eckerson Jr.
