If you have a child in school and you live within a couple miles of their school –
(this example is a 2.5 mile radius)
And you want to avoid this:
(a parking lot full of idling, stationary vehicles and a backed-up city street adjoining school property)
Then try this:
Or this:
Or even this:
For more information, check out:
National Center for Safe Routes to School
Walk To School
Popularity: 7% [?]
Problem is…not all of us have those nice gridded streets. They just built a cluster of schools (k-12) 1.5 miles from my place. Over 600 children live within the 2.5 mile radius, but are forced to be bused or drive due to total lack of pedestrian infrastructure. There are no sidewalks, no cross walks, no crossing guards and the road that runs between the schools is a high volume, narrow two lane road with no shoulders. But the land to build on was cheap! *rolleyes* What is pathetic is that an additional 2,000-3,000 homes are planned for the same general area so traffic will only increase!
Aaron
My mum wouldn’t allow me to ride my bike to school as a kid. We walked instead (3/4 mile). By walking we could take a back way in to the school through a park. Bikes weren’t allowed on the trail through the park so if you biked you had to go to the front of the school with all the cars. My mum had dropped me off enough times to see how brain dead the other parents were once their little ones had been dropped off. They turned into aggressive zombies hell bent on racing to work. So I walked, both ways, up hill, in the snow…
Iron Man is a Missouri resident…so I’ll bet he’s not fibbing about the hills and snow!!!
I grew up in suburban Detroit, so yeah I did walk in the snow. We could have a foot of snow down and school still wouldn’t be canceled. We weren’t allowed to short cut over the frozen ponds either. The safety monitors with the orange sashes were out of class before the rest of us. They stood along the many routes waiting to nab you for doing bad.
Kids learn from their parents. So if mom and dad always have an excuse to drive and not ride or walk, why should they be any different? Parents need to set the example by reducing their driving.
Check out http://carfreedays.com/. It is about parents setting an example by doing and they include the kids.
While I feel, I had a hand in giving iron man the idea for the article, by previous comments. Your welcome Iron man. I need to come clean, regarding the fact this won’t work for my family, even though my sons public elementary school that he would have attended is less than 2 miles from my house.
My wife and I feel Public schools have deteriorated to such a horrible level we’ve decided to put our kindegartner in private school. Sure we could have tried to change some things localy, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort because right now its a loosing battle because of special interest such as LULAC and ACLU that have screwed our public schools and teachers. Our conclusion was why fight a loosing battle when we can go down the road and get the quality education, structure and discipline we require of our school and our children deserve. And a surprise bonus, ethnic diversity that will benefit our children cultural education.
this also means for me and my bike, that 2 of my bike commute days just got slammed with driving our son 8 miles to school and about 3 additional miles because its out of the way. Sad day for my bike miles, good day for the family. Well worth it for a quality education we require of our schools but can’t get from public schools. I’d drive 3 times as far if I had to to get to this school.
Thanks to bike comic Yehuda Moon, I’m really looking forward to the day when my four-year-old can take the bicycle bus to school.
We’re very fortunately in that we live two blocks from the elemntary school and half a mile from the middle school and about a mile from the high school. So, he can bike everywhere he needs to go for at least the next 12 years.
One of the high school students at my church is a hardcore bicycle commuter. He turns 16 in October and I hope he’ll take my advice: get a license, not a car. Every year he delays getting a car is thousands of dollars he isn’t spending on everything that comes along with the car.
Really, even if he bums a ride everywhere and always pays for the driver’s gas, he’ll come out hundreds of dollars a head and, as long as he is buying the gas, will be the driver’s best friend.
—Matt
PUnisher is the worst kind of faux nerd – s/he-it got the formulas both wrong.
Radius is half the diameter, as in radiating out from the middle instead of dissecting the circle 
C = pi times the diameter. (pi r squared is area.)
MarkR — no grief from me: a good education for your kids is far more important than an eco-friendly commute. We’re lucky in that our local public school is both diverse and has a good educational record…
Of course, the above article does NOT apply to everyone. There are plenty of folks who live too far away or have too many commitments to take the time out to walk or ride to school. Nevertheless, there are still MORE folks out there who should seriously consider these transportation alternatives.
Sioux — awesome! I’ll have to point out those serious math errors to that “faux nerd” Punisher (who lives right down the street from me). Ha ha!
[...] Original post by unknown [...]
[...] I’m sort of dreading the rain and wind, but nevertheless committed to our non-car dependent lifestyle. [...]
[...] of us around here are big fans of encouraging school-age children (and their parents) to ride bicycles to school…it gives kids much-needed exercise and helps teach them that it IS possible to live car-lite. [...]
