Sneckdowns: The Early Years

All photos: Michael King
Madison Avenue, in the year 2000. All photos: Michael King

Before there were hashtags and #sneckdowns, there was Michael King, taking pictures of residual snow on NYC street corners. A principal with Nelson\Nygaard, King is an architect by training and a pioneer of traffic calming street design in the United States. He captured these images to show how much asphalt can easily be claimed to make streets safer.

King says he used these photos for his own research and to make the case for curb extensions at NYC DOT, where he was named the agency’s first director of traffic calming in 1997. The Brooklyn photos were taken in the mid- to late-90s, and King says they may have influenced the Downtown Brooklyn Traffic Calming Project (which was in the works for years but implemented quite recently). The Central Park and Upper East Side photos are from 2000.

Enjoy, and get ready for more sneckdowns coming soon: The forecast calls for six inches of snow starting Sunday evening.

central_park_snow
The 96th Street Central Park transverse.
central_park_no_snow
The same transverse, sneckdownless. Look at those wide lanes — so much room to speed.

congress_court
Court Street and Congress Street.
dean_hoyt
Hoyt and Dean.
amity_clinton
Clinton and Amity.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Sneckdowns: Taking the World by Storm

By Brad Aaron |
The #sneckdown is now a phenomenon, with nature’s traffic-calming gaining international media coverage and photos popping up from across the U.S. and Canada. “The snow is almost like nature’s tracing paper,” Streetfilms’ Clarence Eckerson told the BBC. “It’s free. You don’t have to do a crazy expensive traffic calming study. It provides a visual cue […]

We’re Talkin’ Sneckdown

By Brad Aaron |
New York City was spared the brunt of winter storm Juno, and with streets in better shape than expected, there are already enough photos out there for our inaugural #sneckdown round-up of the season. A portmanteau of “snow” and “neckdown,” a sneckdown occurs when driving patterns delineated in snow reveal excess street space that might be […]

Here They Are: Your First Sneckdowns of Winter 2016

By Brad Aaron |
#sneckdown on Court Street @StreetsblogNYC pic.twitter.com/sv09VYYqU2 — Bahij Chancey (@Bahij) January 25, 2016 Like much of the East Coast, New York got walloped on Saturday, so the next few days will be prime sneckdown time. Here’s the season’s first collection of photos from NYC, where “nature’s tracing paper” is outlining street redesign opportunities all over the city. […]