Photo by [salsus].

At the height of the storm and its immediate aftermath, local officials and newscasters were urging people not to walk outside, because they were walking in the street and would get in the way of vehicles.

Was that the smart move to ensure safety, or another sign of how our society has come to view streets as the exclusive province of cars?

Dave Murphy wrote,

Generally, that’s very good advice. However, [News Channel 8 was] showing footage of pedestrians crossing streets and dismissing it as wildly dangerous behavior because, hey, cars gotta use those streets! Certainly driving conditions merit warnings, but why are we chiding the pedestrians instead of the people driving non-emergency vehicles? How are pedestrians expected to stay out of the streets when public services are focusing efforts on clearing roadways while ignoring sidewalks?

David’s neighborhood in Laurel doesn’t even have sidewalks for people to walk in. Commenter darren wrote,

Watching ABC7 news, and I’m shocked at how shocked they are at people walking in the roads. The sidewalks aren’t plowed of course, but they’re pretty explicit in their belief that rather than walk to wherever they need to go, or just walk to enjoy a weekend snow, folks need to stay out of the way of cars. Which everybody knows shouldn’t be out there in the first place.

A blog post, tweet, or comment I can’t find now reminded us that “streets” were not always considered “places primarily for motor vehicles,” but rather places that vehicles, pedestrians, and bicycles shared. A snowstorm that cuts down the level of traffic and restricts the usable space in the roadway is an opportunity to examine how we think about streets.

In the next post, we’ll return to topics that don’t involve snow.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.