@ Getting to school - bus vs. private car

[pixy0stix]

My city is a Platinum Bike city. Which means we have bike paths/lanes everywhere. We also have a dedicated civil engineer who identifies sidewalk gaps in our infrastructure, prioritizing areas around schools, with a dedicated budget to fill in the gaps. Several recent projects have been to widen sidewalks to promote multi-modal use along arterials to help people feel comfortable walking/biking along them.

None of this happened overnight. It's been decades of citizen and government priority, hours of work by advocacy and parenting groups, etc.

That being said, we have older neighborhood schools that allow kids to choice into them. Which means more car traffic in neighborhoods that weren't built to house car lines. So that fucks up a lot of things, including people not wanting to use the safe infrastructure because the people in cars make things unsafe.

ETA: Our city bus system is completely free to all passengers.

[redheadbaker]

Feb 19, 2024 18:02:11 GMT -5 neverfstop said:

Those of you want walk or ride bikes (or did as kids) were there sidewalks or bike lanes? 

We have sidewalks (and crossing guards), but no bike lanes

[StrawberryBlondie]

Feb 19, 2024 16:27:30 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

Whatever happened to the safety patrol?


(Rhetorical, but we all wanted to be on it because we could get out of class for safety patrol duties in elementary school!)

We have one!!

[brooklyn]

Our town is under 2 miles wide and doesn’t have bussing. My older son goes to the local school. My husband drives him in the morning and braves the car line. I don’t drive, so I emailed the school last year and asked how I pick him up as a walker. They literally had no idea since nobody else walks, which I thought was insane. Now he’s old enough to walk home by himself (about .5 of a mile down one street that has crossing guards and 2 other local schools on it so super short and safe), and people are constantly offering him a ride, or calling me and asking me if I knew he was walking. 🙄 Coming from the city I find car culture so weird.

[noodleoo]

DD1 started K during Covid so we didn’t send her on the bus because it was another potential exposure (and that year being a close contact got you excluded from school for 10 days so it wasn’t worth the risk). I think we just got used to driving her because of that and so we still don’t use the bus regularly. She’s taken the bus a few times but we mostly walk when the weather is nice or drive. We live in NE so we drive most of the winter because of cold/snow.

Logistically the car line is also easier for us. The school is 1 mile from our house and our bus stop is 0.5 mile walk. So if we’re walking to bus stop, we just walk to school. The bus is also incredibly unreliable, so sometimes she’d wait 10 mins for it and we could have walked to school by then. Currently we still drive DD2 to daycare (which is near the school) so it’s easier to just drive them both in one trip. Next year when DD2 starts K, maybe we will try the bus more.

In our town, they guarantee free busing for all kids K thru HS. I’ve been told this is very unusual. But I’ve also heard a lot of complaints about the bus including driver shortages and them not being on time. One friend doesn’t use the bus anymore because she was being bullied on it. There are no bus monitors so it was not a great situation so I don’t blame her for driving. Our car line is also pretty short/fast so it isn’t that inconvenient for parents.

[pixy0stix]

I wonder what would happen if we started talking about cars like we do guns.

We all have cars because we're scared what happens to us when we don't have our cars.

It's the cars. It's the guns.

[abs]

Feb 19, 2024 18:55:01 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

I wonder what would happen if we started talking about cars like we do guns.

We all have cars because we're scared what happens to us when we don't have our cars.

It's the cars. It's the guns.

Maybe but it’s also the infrastructure and funding. If DD walked to school she would walk 3 miles, cross a busy 4 lane road with a 50 mph speed limit where there are daily accidents from red light runners (it’s the phones), and there are no side walks for half of it. For high school add another mile plus train tracks. Nope. Would be nice to utilize the buses but again there isn’t enough space to accommodate instruments. Now that I think about it no one in band or orchestra takes the bus unless you play like flute.

These are all things that could be fixed of course. Better transportation options and more funding. But to say it’s the cars isn’t really fair in this case.

[plutosmoon]

No bike lanes or sidewalks in my current neighborhood. It's weird because the other half of the neighborhood has sidewalks. I think sidewalks are a factor in our bussing decisions, in addition to distance and type of street.

DD is old enough to walk by herself (our school actually only requires K students to have a parent), but if I lived here when she was younger, I would have had to drive her. School doors open at 8:25, I need to be at work at 8:30. Dropping off by car means I'm only a couple minutes late, as opposed to around 15-20 if I had to walk back to my house first.

The conversation about crosswalks and sidewalks reminded me of DD's bus stop at the house I lived in when DD was in K-2. We lived near the top of a giant hill, the bus stop was at the bottom of the hill on the other side of the road, and required we cross a busy street. We asked for a crosswalk at the bottom of the hill to cross the busy street, and the intersection was deemed too dangerous for a crosswalk, but apparently not dangerous enough to come up with a different bus stop. We drove the tenth of a mile, because I sure wasn't letting my 6 year old cross a street deemed too unsafe for a cross walk. The annoying part was a bus came down the street, but they told us our street was too steep to stop on. I tried to get a stop at the top of the hill, or the bus to stop in the other direction, this was apparently too challenging.

[pixy0stix]

Feb 19, 2024 19:12:00 GMT -5 abs said:

Feb 19, 2024 18:55:01 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

I wonder what would happen if we started talking about cars like we do guns.

We all have cars because we're scared what happens to us when we don't have our cars.

It's the cars. It's the guns.

Maybe but it’s also the infrastructure and funding. If DD walked to school she would walk 3 miles, cross a busy 4 lane road with a 50 mph speed limit where there are daily accidents from red light runners (it’s the phones), and there are no side walks for half of it. For high school add another mile plus train tracks. Nope. Would be nice to utilize the buses but again there isn’t enough space to accommodate instruments. Now that I think about it no one in band or orchestra takes the bus unless you play like flute.

These are all things that could be fixed of course. Better transportation options and more funding. But to say it’s the cars isn’t really fair in this case.

It's totally fair since the infrastructure has been prioritized for cars. It's obvious that no one took into consideration multi-modal traffic. Either no one in your city is advocating for it, or there hasn't been a demonstrated need.

[icedcoffee]

Feb 19, 2024 18:02:11 GMT -5 neverfstop said:

Those of you want walk or ride bikes (or did as kids) were there sidewalks or bike lanes? Many (ES) schools around here may be in neighborhoods that have sidewalks, but still pull kids from miles away without sidewalks. Because of the lack of zoning around here, schools are just put anywhere & often near highways or roads where people go 50+ MPH.

We walk. We have sidewalks and a crossing guard. BUT we didn’t always have sidewalks! I started petitioning the county right after we closed on our house. The day they approved it was in the top 10 days of my life. 😂 What an accomplishment! I still smirk about it when I walk down the sidewalk. LOL

[penguingrrl]

Feb 19, 2024 18:03:13 GMT -5 @villainv said:

Feb 19, 2024 16:12:39 GMT -5 penguingrrl said:

That sounds like a solvable problem for sure. I would think adding a crossing guard would be the answer. No way I would trust a new “no turn on red” law to work quickly (people will not notice or “forget”).

I don’t fully understand why, but apparently in our county, crossing guards have to be Sherrif’s deputies, and can’t be a school employee or a volunteer. There’s already a Sherrif’s deputy who acts as a crossing guard at a non-signaled crosswalk in front of the nearby middle school where there are a lot more walkers, and they won’t add another one (nor will they shift times slightly so the same deputy can cover both). I don’t know why they can’t just fix this, it makes no sense.

[mention]neverfstop [/mention] no bike lanes, but there are sidewalks. Both the middle school and elementary school are both at the bottom of a huge hill, which makes biking to/from school nearly impossible, but walking or scootering is doable.

That’s interesting. That definitely would make it harder. Most of our crossing guards are retirees who like to see the kids. Many are also volunteers with the local fire police and some were fire fighters before that. The local police cover when anyone calls out. No volunteers and they have to go through training, but almost anyone who can commit the hours can do it.

[kiminky]

Busing is a huge issue in our district. We are a district of 100K students. We have always provided busing to all students unless you lived within a mile of the school. This school year, the bus driver shortage has hit us very hard. Due to the shortage, many drivers are doing multiple runs and some students are consistently getting to school late every day and don't get picked up from school on the bus until at least an hour or more after school is over. The school board is about to decide on a plan for busing next year, most likely eliminating busing for our magnet schools. This will essentially cause huge inequality at these magnets, creating private schools within a public school district, only having students whose parents are able to transport them. Even now, as a School Social Worker, the amount of parents I talk to day in and day out that if their kid misses the bus they have no way to get to school is huge. Add in to that buses that get to the bus stop at unreliable times in inclement weather where you're waiting for an hour and it is just a huge problem that snowballs. We have had safety issues at bus stops (a student was shot and killed last year), issues with crossing guards (difficulty finding enough to hire and a couple that have been hit) and behavior issues on the bus (videos posted online of fights, etc on buses all the time). Car rider lines will increase with the removal of buses and parents who have no transportation will suffer. Our city bus system is not free and can take a couple of hours to get across town.

[penguingrrl]

Feb 19, 2024 18:02:11 GMT -5 neverfstop said:

Those of you want walk or ride bikes (or did as kids) were there sidewalks or bike lanes? Many (ES) schools around here may be in neighborhoods that have sidewalks, but still pull kids from miles away without sidewalks. Because of the lack of zoning around here, schools are just put anywhere & often near highways or roads where people go 50+ MPH.

No bike lanes, but I live in a town that dates back to 1667 and was largely developed before cars became as ubiquitous. Our middle school was built in 1935 as our only school and had four classrooms and a gym as a major upgrade from a 2 room schoolhouse. And there isn’t a single road in town with an over 40 mph speed limit or with more than one lane in either direction. The town has always had decent sidewalks and they added a bunch more in the past five years.

The single place we have a real safety issue is one road that goes between the elementary and middle schools and only has sidewalks on one side that handle bikers and walkers going in both directions to get to and from both schools. When I was a kid that road was just closed to cars before and after school so bikes could use the street while walkers used the sidewalk. But everyone has learned to navigate that safely. (I know bikers are supposed to use the street but the police tell kids under 12 to please not do that).

[nsl]

Feb 19, 2024 19:23:43 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Feb 19, 2024 19:12:00 GMT -5 abs said:

Maybe but it’s also the infrastructure and funding. If DD walked to school she would walk 3 miles, cross a busy 4 lane road with a 50 mph speed limit where there are daily accidents from red light runners (it’s the phones), and there are no side walks for half of it. For high school add another mile plus train tracks. Nope. Would be nice to utilize the buses but again there isn’t enough space to accommodate instruments. Now that I think about it no one in band or orchestra takes the bus unless you play like flute.

These are all things that could be fixed of course. Better transportation options and more funding. But to say it’s the cars isn’t really fair in this case.

It's totally fair since the infrastructure has been prioritized for cars. It's obvious that no one took into consideration multi-modal traffic. Either no one in your city is advocating for it, or there hasn't been a demonstrated need.

Or you live in a state where "walkability" and "15 minute cities" are being called Marxism by the supermajority and thus conversations about need are shut down before they can even start.

[pixy0stix]

Feb 19, 2024 20:24:57 GMT -5 nsl said:

Feb 19, 2024 19:23:43 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

It's totally fair since the infrastructure has been prioritized for cars. It's obvious that no one took into consideration multi-modal traffic. Either no one in your city is advocating for it, or there hasn't been a demonstrated need.

Or you live in a state where "walkability" and "15 minute cities" are being called Marxism by the supermajority and thus conversations about need are shut down before they can even start.

Right - just like guns.

[sent]

We picked our town because of the sidewalks and walkability. In reality, drivers are so discourteous which definitely makes me nervous about my kids crossing the intersections where drivers are constantly trying to beat the light. The poor crossing guards have been hurt because of the awful drivers. Very few kids in our town qualify for busing so our town has "subscription busing" which is its own problem. Lots of parents complain about the cost. I'm sure many who want to avoid the cost just drive their kids. Also, the district is at the whim of the bus company. I sat through a meeting recently where a school board member explained all the lengths the district goes through to try and control the bus costs.

The husband of one of my employees is a bus driver. His schedule is crazy. He drives public school kids in the morning and afternoon. In between those routes, he comes home for a bit. After he drops off all the public school kids after school, he goes over to a private school and drives like 2 kids home like an hour, one way. Then he has to drive back to the bus yard I think which is like 40 minutes, then home which is another 20 minutes. They set up his schedule to not do the private school route on Friday afternoons so he won't hit overtime. After I heard her describe his schedule, I felt like the guy deserves the overtime after all of that! This employee's mom is also a bus driver, but she's per diem because she likes to spend her winters back in her home country.

Another fun fact I recently learned at the meeting is that school buses, at least in our state, can not be used to transport children after like 7 years. So the bus companies are constantly having to buy new buses to keep up with this thus increasing busing costs all around. The companies sell the old buses to other countries to recoup some of the costs.

It seems like this entire system was set up in the 50s - 70s and could use some serious modern day revamping.

[vamoose]

Feb 19, 2024 18:02:11 GMT -5 neverfstop said:

Those of you want walk or ride bikes (or did as kids) were there sidewalks or bike lanes? Many (ES) schools around here may be in neighborhoods that have sidewalks, but still pull kids from miles away without sidewalks. Because of the lack of zoning around here, schools are just put anywhere & often near highways or roads where people go 50+ MPH.

Walking and riding bikes is big in my town and we have no bus service and kids within a 4ish mile radius of school. The main part of the town has some sidewalks and some bikes lanes, but the more mountainy neighborhoods (like where I live) do not. My town does have a big culture of walking and bike riding, so kids are generally taught from younger ages how to ride safely and there is some awareness of bikers and pedestrians. It’s still scary to me, especially my kids biking down our street and winding street! But they do, and I try to just reinforce safe biking.

[imimahoney]

Feb 19, 2024 18:02:11 GMT -5 neverfstop said:

Those of you want walk or ride bikes (or did as kids) were there sidewalks or bike lanes? Many (ES) schools around here may be in neighborhoods that have sidewalks, but still pull kids from miles away without sidewalks. Because of the lack of zoning around here, schools are just put anywhere & often near highways or roads where people go 50+ MPH.

There are some sidewalks but not every street has them. No bike lanes.

[gerberdaisy]

Reading all the responses is reminding me how lucky we are with our bussing. For us all K students can bus, elementary over .25 miles get bussed, and ms/hs over 1 mile. Even then, we live in a village with sidewalks most everywhere and residential streets, with crossing guards. We live about .2-.5 miles from the kids schools (depending on which one). I do give DD a ride most mornings in the winter, and drop her off at the park across the street, then she walks home. DS and I walk to school together and he takes the bus home. Unfortunately, while we live close to school we are in the town, so no sidewalks. that is the biggest determent for letting the kids walk alone more, people drive too fast on our street.

[wildrice]

I forget the exact timing, but my sister's kids would have to be on a bus for well over an hour in each direction if they took the bus. It sounds like they were the furthest away stop, so they would be first picked up and last dropped off. So, they don't ride the bus. I think it's kind of bullshit to offer a bus with an unnecessarily long commute like that - when we were kids, we took the bus and it went basically straight to the school. My sister lives in a big neighborhood so it's not like they are a single house in the middle of nowhere - there are a ton of kids that live there and go to that school.

[jaylea]

My kids have never been eligible for a bus in their entire school careers. We are about a mile and a half from middle school, which they have walked when it’s not freezing or icy (Maine). High school students take the city bus, no school buses.

[scm1011]

Feb 19, 2024 11:45:41 GMT -5 devonpow said:

Our district is all walkable neighborhood K-8 schools and 1 high school for everyone (walkable for all but 1 k-8 district). There are no buses except 1 for the further away high school group (and fir kids with special needs etc).

We live literally across from our k-8 which is awesome and about 1 mile from the high school. DS1 is a junior and I think we have driven him 2 times in three years, when it was particularly awful weather. Otherwise it’s all walking - a mile isn’t that far.

I’m always shocked at how many people drive their kids - since we live across from the school we see it every day. I know where they all live abd it’s extremely walkable. There is zero reason to drive your kids most of the time.

This, almost 100%. We're about a half mile from our PK-8 though and walk. Its an urban school so there is no parking lot or drop off zone (you need to find street parking or stop traffic to let your kids jump out). Our HS is further away (maybe 2 miles?) and my kids will take the city bus there when the time comes. I'm always surprised at how many people drive their kids when walking is so much more efficient. 

[macmars45]

I grew up with my dad teaching at the elementary school I attended. He took me (and my sisters) to school with him. We road the bus to child care after school though. 6th grade-12th grade I road the bus to & from school unless I had after school activities.

Now I'm a parent and I have an autistic kid. The bus is crowded and loud. He already struggles to mask all school day. So I know he could ride the bus but at what cost to his sensory and mental health? 

I just started working FT at the school he attends so DS comes with me to & from school unless I have meetings and then H will drop and/or pick him up. Even when H does drop off or pick up he parks and walks DS to the door. So we aren't in the drop off or pick up line. And we both drive EVs. Maybe that makes it better?

[mrshandy]

Our neighborhood elementary school is right in the heart of the neighborhood and there is only one bus. The rest of the kids walk, bike, or get rides. We're a quarter of a mile from school so DD is a walker. I've driven her up the hill once or twice and picked her up when it was pouring rain. I'm proud to have made the kids walk in the worst of weather. Builds character. LOL. DS is in 8th grade and takes the bus at 636AM and if he misses it there is hell to pay. Next year in high school he'll likely go to a school with a STEM program and he's a transfer so no bussing. We'll have to figure out rides or maybe a city bus. Theoretically he could ride his bike but that terrifies me and

Traffic lines at elementary schools are no joke!

[wawa]

Feb 19, 2024 16:27:30 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

Whatever happened to the safety patrol?


(Rhetorical, but we all wanted to be on it because we could get out of class for safety patrol duties in elementary school!)

I have reservations about this program - but still exists!  exchange.aaa.com/safety/aaa-school-safety-patrol/

[taratru]

One of the things I really like when we visit Europe is seeing all the kids on public transportation or riding on dedicated, safe bike lanes to school. It's so good for them to have that independence.

One thing I really hate is seeing busses in our current Dubai 'hood picking kids up at 6am. So not good for them.

Our kids never attended schools within our housing area - we choices them into the district in which we worked. It was a pain. Now that we are headed back, we are prioritizing buying a house that is walkable, with "bus route" as a backup. The drop-off, pickup life wears me out and creates issues with two working parents.

So basically, one more thing that is influenced by, and in turn, influences privileged public education. *sigh*

[wawa]

Feb 19, 2024 18:03:13 GMT -5 @villainv said:

Feb 19, 2024 16:12:39 GMT -5 penguingrrl said:

That sounds like a solvable problem for sure. I would think adding a crossing guard would be the answer. No way I would trust a new “no turn on red” law to work quickly (people will not notice or “forget”).

I don’t fully understand why, but apparently in our county, crossing guards have to be Sherrif’s deputies, and can’t be a school employee or a volunteer. There’s already a Sherrif’s deputy who acts as a crossing guard at a non-signaled crosswalk in front of the nearby middle school where there are a lot more walkers, and they won’t add another one (nor will they shift times slightly so the same deputy can cover both). I don’t know why they can’t just fix this, it makes no sense.

[mention]neverfstop [/mention] no bike lanes, but there are sidewalks. Both the middle school and elementary school are both at the bottom of a huge hill, which makes biking to/from school nearly impossible, but walking or scootering is doable.

FWIW, there are places that have changed that requirement since it's so much easier to get a school employee out there than another police employee.  It can be done.  Might require a local ordinance change, but typically county level politics are movable in that way.  If you want to poke at it.

[pixy0stix]

Feb 20, 2024 8:20:32 GMT -5 wildrice said:

I forget the exact timing, but my sister's kids would have to be on a bus for well over an hour in each direction if they took the bus. It sounds like they were the furthest away stop, so they would be first picked up and last dropped off. So, they don't ride the bus. I think it's kind of bullshit to offer a bus with an unnecessarily long commute like that - when we were kids, we took the bus and it went basically straight to the school. My sister lives in a big neighborhood so it's not like they are a single house in the middle of nowhere - there are a ton of kids that live there and go to that school.

My bus story growing up is that sometimes it took upwards of 3 hours depending on if kids from this one family rode.

[wildrice]

Feb 20, 2024 11:16:50 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Feb 20, 2024 8:20:32 GMT -5 wildrice said:

I forget the exact timing, but my sister's kids would have to be on a bus for well over an hour in each direction if they took the bus. It sounds like they were the furthest away stop, so they would be first picked up and last dropped off. So, they don't ride the bus. I think it's kind of bullshit to offer a bus with an unnecessarily long commute like that - when we were kids, we took the bus and it went basically straight to the school. My sister lives in a big neighborhood so it's not like they are a single house in the middle of nowhere - there are a ton of kids that live there and go to that school.

My bus story growing up is that sometimes it took upwards of 3 hours depending on if kids from this one family rode.

Oof... That's so much time out of the day!

I am glad a bus exists for kids without other options, but that should never be the planned daily commute IMO! Especially for the public school your are zoned to attend.

[pixy0stix]

Feb 20, 2024 11:21:49 GMT -5 wildrice said:

Feb 20, 2024 11:16:50 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

My bus story growing up is that sometimes it took upwards of 3 hours depending on if kids from this one family rode.

Oof... That's so much time out of the day!

I am glad a bus exists for kids without other options, but that should never be the planned daily commute IMO! Especially for the public school your are zoned to attend.

Welcome to middle of nowhere NE where schools consolidate for one big ass county. Rural kids I have no quibbles over people driving to their schools. Although kids upwards of 5 miles out would ride their bikes in on the dirt roads. In NE you can start driving to school when you're 14. Many kids start driving to help out their families as soon as they can reach the peddles.