For my more latitudinally northern colleagues and friends, the unfortunate truth is that the first snows of the year are coming our way sooner rather than later. But do not despair, there are some great opportunities hidden within those snowbanks!
Today I’m talking about “sneckdowns” – (S-Teckdowns? ®) which is a portemanteau of snowy and neckdowns. Neckdowns are a technical term for curb extensions, or the unused space on a roadway. Sneckdowns are the unused space on a trafficked area delineated by snowfall. I was inspired by a very interesting article on the always insightful 99% Invisible podcast website. The link can be found here: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/undriven-snow-activists-trace-winter-car-routes-reshape-city-streets/
I think there are opportunities to better understand our trafficked space on our haul roads and integrate this information into a georeferenced drone survey to really do some engineering work on it! Check out the video below to learn more!
As always, I would love to hear your thoughts and if you’re planning to try this out at your minesite this winter!