2014's Endless Snow Has at Least Been Good for Transportation Nerds

You can learn an awful lot about traffic problems from snow. Sometimes, what you discover is obvious and kind of depressing, like that the Atlanta metro area is really not prepared for a winter storm and there's a lot of sad historical and systemic reasons for that. Thankfully, other times snow teaches happier lessons. That’s the takeaway from what might be termed the Great #Sneckdown Season of 2014.

Let's get this out of the way first: the term “sneckdown” is a brutally cheesy combination of the words “snowy” and “neckdown.” In case you’re not a transportation wonk, “neckdown” refers to a sidewalk extension installed at a crosswalk, which gives pedestrians a shorter distance to traverse and naturally calms car traffic.