12 ms·

Imagine a world where instead of having to strap your screaming kids in to a car seat for an hour drive in traffic, you walked along a pedestrian street, your k

Imagine a world where instead of having to strap your screaming kids in to a car seat for an hour drive in traffic, you walked along a pedestrian street, your kids kicking a ball around, you visit a couple stores, see your kids off to their school, and then walk a couple more blocks to work. When school is over your kids walk safely back home by themselves because there aren't cars out there threatening their lives. This sounds way less stressful than your kids being dependent on you and your car for everything they need.

konart 7y ago
I don't thing this is what codebolt was talking about. If you can one kid - there is no problem really. Walk him or her to school in the morning, ask grandmother to bring them back etc. When you have more than one - it is entrily possible they will end up going to different schools and after the school one of them had to go to the music shool and the other one to his hockey team or something etc etc. You simply can't do this without a car. I was the only child in the family so we never needed a car for this kind of scenario, plus we were living in a relatevely small city (450k), so public transport was more than enough for me, but this is not always the case. >and then walk a couple more blocks to work. yeah, now imaging you have two of them going to two different schools, each 40 minutes walking distance from home, different directions and your office in somewhere else too.
- adrianh 7y ago
  It’s definitely possible without a car — people here in Holland do it all the time. Maybe qualify your answer to “suburban America” and similarly (non)designed places? Point is, it’s not fundamentally impossible to live with 2+ kids and no car.
  - konart 7y ago
    I live in Russia though. When I went to school (1995-2005) I lived in a 450k city, now it is Moscow. And Moscow have much better public transport than many other places. My point was about little kids, you won't send them off to a public transport. We are not talking about teenagers here. Not me at least.
    - ido 7y ago
      Sounds like a problem of where you live(d) rather than intrinsic to cars or lack thereof. I have 2 kids and live in Berlin and never had nor needed a car. I previously lived for 8 years in Vienna and the same holds true there. The same will be true to most or all decently-sized western European cities.
- oefrha 7y ago
  As have been pointed out by multiple people, kids are perfectly capable of taking public transit themselves. Kids under ten might need to be accompanied by a guardian, but there are usually two parents in a household, and some grandparents will help, too. Caretakers can be hired in certain cases. Some family “pool” their kids together too, not unlike in the U.S. where parents would take turns to drive neighbors’ kids. Also, having cars but no public transit doesn’t change the fundamental equation and doesn’t improve the situation much (especially considering the fact that in many places driving in the morning rush hours might even be slower than taking the subway), in fact quite the opposite, teenagers are wholly dependent on parents when they could have been independent. > You simply can’t do this without a car. I grew up like that. People have been doing that for decades.
  - noobermin 7y ago
    > As have been pointed out by multiple people, kids are perfectly capable of taking public transit themselves. This is another difference that intersects with other issues in America. In a car, your child is under your control. Moreover, adding to your following point of a child under ten being unaccompanied in public, no American parent would dream of letting their children go out alone and recently, this includes even children in their early teens. Especially in the previous decades, helicopter parenting has reached a new peak in the US, this seems somewhat coincident with a general infantalization of young adults.
    - kasey_junk 7y ago
      It is incredibly common for kids to be alone in cities in the US. I can look out my window right now and see 2 children playing in a park with no supervision. On my train commute every morning there were school children who get off at my stop because it’s where their school is. Their rides happen at reduced fares as well. The trope rings very false to me and seems to be about one particular demographic (white and suburban). If there is an increase in over watching our children it’s because we’ve over indexed on cars, not the reverse.
      - 7y ago
- flukus 7y ago
  I think you're struggling to imagine the impact that good public transport has on a cities design. Schools, parks, shops, sporting facilities all start congregating around transport stops/hubs so basically everywhere you need to take kids is within a 5 minute walk of one another. > yeah, now imaging you have two of them going to two different schools, each 40 minutes walking distance from home, different directions and your office in somewhere else too. I can't imagine why you would send them to different schools, unless one is a high school in which case they're old enough to get there by themselves. For most people the school they're taking the kids to is right next to the transit stop they'll be taking to work.
  - konart 7y ago
    I live in Moscow and we arguably have a very good public transpot system. Not the best, but still. As of the rest of you comment - here is my answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20632459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20632459
- shalmanese 7y ago
  Why would they need to walk 40 minutes? In countries with good public school systems, all of the public schools are equally acceptable so you just send them to the nearest one which is generally less than a mile walk away.
  - wozniacki 7y ago
    I think you're living in a make-believe world of homogeneity. There are vast differences between the quality of schooling - both public or private - even within global metropolises like NYC, London, Paris & Tokyo. Its downright laughable to assume otherwise.
    - piotr1212 7y ago
      Probably depends on the country. Here in the Netherlands the difference of quality is really small between public elementary schools. Private schools are practically non-existent.
    - oefrha 7y ago
      Middle and high school do matter, but I don’t think primary/elementary/grade school — whatever you call it — makes much of a difference. I attended the average neighborhood primary school back in my day, and went on to the most competitive middle school, high school, and university.
      - wozniacki 7y ago
        Are you really implying a school in Croydon, a large town in south London is going to be functionally and qualitatively equivalent to say a school in Golders Green, an area in the London Borough of Barnet? [1][2] Equivalent in all the areas one might measure the attractiveness and potential of a school? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croydon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croydon [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golders_Green https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golders_Green edit:typo
        oefrha 7y ago
- ginko 7y ago
  Even as an elementary school kid I walked to school by myself or with class mates. My older brother, being in middle school by then would walk over to the next train station in the next town and take the train to his school by himself. I would do the same later-on. If your parents brought you to school every day you'd probably have been made fun of by all the other kids.
- virgilp 7y ago
  I have a different experience - with 3 kids, in a 2M city does't even have a great transport infrastructure (Bucharest). School/kindergarden is within walking distance. Highschool is farther away, indeed (because that's what the elder kid chose - she wanted a school outside the neighbourhood), but she still goes there by public transit. In fact it's probably faster by subway than by car, in the morning. Kids go to english classes, drawing classes, swimming etc. either by walking or public transit. Maybe it "helps" that the public roads are congested, and I simply wouldn't have time to take them anywhere by car. It definitely helps that I live in a good/central neighbourhood that is well covered by public transit.
- minikomi 7y ago
  I hope this works -- street view of in front of a Japanese kindergarten. Electric 2 seater bikes are the name of the game here for 2 child families. https://www.google.com/maps/@35.675605,139.6796798,3a,75y,223.45h,80.79t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1salA4XqfJMaQQnkPwjJ2fSQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@35.675605,139.6796798,3a,75y,22...
  - magduf 7y ago
    Yep, that's what I saw in Japan recently too (both electric and non-electric). Tons of bikes had a child seat, some of them had 2 child seats. I also loved how (as you can see in this photo), people just park their bike the way you park a car: you just leave it there, without locking it to something. Here in America bikes like that would be stolen left and right. But I guess that's one of the big differences between a highly industrialized and developed nation and a 3rd-world one.
- piotr1212 7y ago
  > yeah, now imaging you have two of them going to two different schools, each 40 minutes walking distance from home, different directions and your office in somewhere else too. I grew up in a small village (+-70k) in the Netherlands, we had 4 schools within 15 min walking distance and I think twice as many with 15 min cycling distance (all kids go to school by bike here). Why would you send your kids to schools 40 minutes walking distance from home? edit: added number of inhabitants of the village
  - dagw 7y ago
    Why would you send your kids to schools 40 minutes walking distance from home? Some times you don't have a choice. Happened to a friend of mine here in Sweden. Their first kid got into the school closest to home. When it was the second kids turn that school was 'full' and they got sent to a school 10 km in the exact opposite direction.
  - konart 7y ago
    My previous answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20632459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20632459
- systemtest 7y ago
  Since the age of 11 I went to school by myself. Sports, dentist appointments and doctors too. It's very common here in Europe and I don't even live in a big city. I see kids on their bikes with a big hockey stick poking out their backpack almost daily. You mention 40 minute walking distance, that's three kilometres for a child or about 10 minutes by bicycle. Or perhaps five stops on a tram or subway. It took a lot of stress off my parents that my brother and me were independent from a young age. Living in a society where you don't need cars gives you that flexibility and ease.
  - konart 7y ago
    Same for me, but I was the only child and as you've said: "Since the age of 11". It is as common here in Russia as it is in Europe. We were talknig about kids though.
- rorykoehler 7y ago
  In a lot of European cities kids walk and bike themselves to school.
  - kalleboo 7y ago
    Even when I lived in the US as a kid me and my friends would bike to elementary school. But this was in the early 90's before everyone went completely neurotic
- CalRobert 7y ago
  "yeah, now imaging you have two of them going to two different schools, each 40 minutes walking distance from home" How old are these kids? Can they not walk themselves?
  - konart 7y ago
    Let's say 8 and 9. They can, but they should not at that age. Not before 11-12.
- mcv 7y ago
  > When you have more than one - it is entrily possible they will end up going to different schools and after the school one of them had to go to the music shool and the other one to his hockey team or something etc etc. You simply can't do this without a car. In a city designed for walking and bicyling, you can do that by bike. And once they're old enough, they can do it on their own bike. Of course the city needs to be designed for that. In a city designed only for cars, you're going to need a car for everything. The big issue here is: how do we want to design our cities? > now imaging you have two of them going to two different schools, each 40 minutes walking distance from home, different directions and your office in somewhere else too. If they're going to two different schools, most likely one of them is going to secondary school and can ride their own bike, or one of them is going to a special needs school and gets picked up. At least, that's how it works around here. In any case, I don't consider 40 minutes a suitable distance for walking: take a bike. It's only a few minutes that way. That said, my wife did insist I get a driver's license when we had kids, and I did. I rarely use it, and certainly for moving kids around the city, a light cargo bike is more practical in Amsterdam.
  - konart 7y ago
    >If they're going to two different schools, most likely one of them is going to secondary school and can ride their own bike, or one of them is going to a special needs school and gets picked up. At least, that's how it works around here. My other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20632459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20632459 As for the 'secondary' school - I, for example, was attending a Gymnasium as main and a musical Lyceum as a secondary. Both since 6-7 years old. And that's pretty common over here.
    - mcv 7y ago
      A single kid going to two different schools is extremely rare here, but as it happens, that's exactly what my son has doing since he was 8: a regular school just around the corner, and a "day a week" school for gifted children which is a bit further away. I take him there by bike. A car wouldn't add much value for me there. But Amsterdam is a sizable yet compact city, which makes everything easy to reach. In a differently designed city, or a smaller town where you might have to travel to another town, things can be completely different.

konart 7y ago

I don't thing this is what codebolt was talking about. If you can one kid - there is no problem really. Walk him or her to school in the morning, ask grandmother to bring them back etc. When you have more than one - it is entrily possible they will end up going to different schools and after the school one of them had to go to the music shool and the other one to his hockey team or something etc etc. You simply can't do this without a car. I was the only child in the family so we never needed a car for this kind of scenario, plus we were living in a relatevely small city (450k), so public transport was more than enough for me, but this is not always the case. >and then walk a couple more blocks to work. yeah, now imaging you have two of them going to two different schools, each 40 minutes walking distance from home, different directions and your office in somewhere else too.

adrianh 7y ago
It’s definitely possible without a car — people here in Holland do it all the time. Maybe qualify your answer to “suburban America” and similarly (non)designed places? Point is, it’s not fundamentally impossible to live with 2+ kids and no car.
- konart 7y ago
  I live in Russia though. When I went to school (1995-2005) I lived in a 450k city, now it is Moscow. And Moscow have much better public transport than many other places. My point was about little kids, you won't send them off to a public transport. We are not talking about teenagers here. Not me at least.
  - ido 7y ago
    Sounds like a problem of where you live(d) rather than intrinsic to cars or lack thereof. I have 2 kids and live in Berlin and never had nor needed a car. I previously lived for 8 years in Vienna and the same holds true there. The same will be true to most or all decently-sized western European cities.
oefrha 7y ago
As have been pointed out by multiple people, kids are perfectly capable of taking public transit themselves. Kids under ten might need to be accompanied by a guardian, but there are usually two parents in a household, and some grandparents will help, too. Caretakers can be hired in certain cases. Some family “pool” their kids together too, not unlike in the U.S. where parents would take turns to drive neighbors’ kids. Also, having cars but no public transit doesn’t change the fundamental equation and doesn’t improve the situation much (especially considering the fact that in many places driving in the morning rush hours might even be slower than taking the subway), in fact quite the opposite, teenagers are wholly dependent on parents when they could have been independent. > You simply can’t do this without a car. I grew up like that. People have been doing that for decades.
- noobermin 7y ago
  > As have been pointed out by multiple people, kids are perfectly capable of taking public transit themselves. This is another difference that intersects with other issues in America. In a car, your child is under your control. Moreover, adding to your following point of a child under ten being unaccompanied in public, no American parent would dream of letting their children go out alone and recently, this includes even children in their early teens. Especially in the previous decades, helicopter parenting has reached a new peak in the US, this seems somewhat coincident with a general infantalization of young adults.
  - kasey_junk 7y ago
    It is incredibly common for kids to be alone in cities in the US. I can look out my window right now and see 2 children playing in a park with no supervision. On my train commute every morning there were school children who get off at my stop because it’s where their school is. Their rides happen at reduced fares as well. The trope rings very false to me and seems to be about one particular demographic (white and suburban). If there is an increase in over watching our children it’s because we’ve over indexed on cars, not the reverse.
    - 7y ago
flukus 7y ago
I think you're struggling to imagine the impact that good public transport has on a cities design. Schools, parks, shops, sporting facilities all start congregating around transport stops/hubs so basically everywhere you need to take kids is within a 5 minute walk of one another. > yeah, now imaging you have two of them going to two different schools, each 40 minutes walking distance from home, different directions and your office in somewhere else too. I can't imagine why you would send them to different schools, unless one is a high school in which case they're old enough to get there by themselves. For most people the school they're taking the kids to is right next to the transit stop they'll be taking to work.
- konart 7y ago
  I live in Moscow and we arguably have a very good public transpot system. Not the best, but still. As of the rest of you comment - here is my answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20632459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20632459
shalmanese 7y ago
Why would they need to walk 40 minutes? In countries with good public school systems, all of the public schools are equally acceptable so you just send them to the nearest one which is generally less than a mile walk away.
- wozniacki 7y ago
  I think you're living in a make-believe world of homogeneity. There are vast differences between the quality of schooling - both public or private - even within global metropolises like NYC, London, Paris & Tokyo. Its downright laughable to assume otherwise.
  - piotr1212 7y ago
    Probably depends on the country. Here in the Netherlands the difference of quality is really small between public elementary schools. Private schools are practically non-existent.
  - oefrha 7y ago
    Middle and high school do matter, but I don’t think primary/elementary/grade school — whatever you call it — makes much of a difference. I attended the average neighborhood primary school back in my day, and went on to the most competitive middle school, high school, and university.
    - wozniacki 7y ago
      Are you really implying a school in Croydon, a large town in south London is going to be functionally and qualitatively equivalent to say a school in Golders Green, an area in the London Borough of Barnet? [1][2] Equivalent in all the areas one might measure the attractiveness and potential of a school? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croydon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croydon [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golders_Green https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golders_Green edit:typo
      - oefrha 7y ago
ginko 7y ago
Even as an elementary school kid I walked to school by myself or with class mates. My older brother, being in middle school by then would walk over to the next train station in the next town and take the train to his school by himself. I would do the same later-on. If your parents brought you to school every day you'd probably have been made fun of by all the other kids.
virgilp 7y ago
I have a different experience - with 3 kids, in a 2M city does't even have a great transport infrastructure (Bucharest). School/kindergarden is within walking distance. Highschool is farther away, indeed (because that's what the elder kid chose - she wanted a school outside the neighbourhood), but she still goes there by public transit. In fact it's probably faster by subway than by car, in the morning. Kids go to english classes, drawing classes, swimming etc. either by walking or public transit. Maybe it "helps" that the public roads are congested, and I simply wouldn't have time to take them anywhere by car. It definitely helps that I live in a good/central neighbourhood that is well covered by public transit.
minikomi 7y ago
I hope this works -- street view of in front of a Japanese kindergarten. Electric 2 seater bikes are the name of the game here for 2 child families. https://www.google.com/maps/@35.675605,139.6796798,3a,75y,223.45h,80.79t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1salA4XqfJMaQQnkPwjJ2fSQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@35.675605,139.6796798,3a,75y,22...
- magduf 7y ago
  Yep, that's what I saw in Japan recently too (both electric and non-electric). Tons of bikes had a child seat, some of them had 2 child seats. I also loved how (as you can see in this photo), people just park their bike the way you park a car: you just leave it there, without locking it to something. Here in America bikes like that would be stolen left and right. But I guess that's one of the big differences between a highly industrialized and developed nation and a 3rd-world one.
piotr1212 7y ago
> yeah, now imaging you have two of them going to two different schools, each 40 minutes walking distance from home, different directions and your office in somewhere else too. I grew up in a small village (+-70k) in the Netherlands, we had 4 schools within 15 min walking distance and I think twice as many with 15 min cycling distance (all kids go to school by bike here). Why would you send your kids to schools 40 minutes walking distance from home? edit: added number of inhabitants of the village
- dagw 7y ago
  Why would you send your kids to schools 40 minutes walking distance from home? Some times you don't have a choice. Happened to a friend of mine here in Sweden. Their first kid got into the school closest to home. When it was the second kids turn that school was 'full' and they got sent to a school 10 km in the exact opposite direction.
- konart 7y ago
  My previous answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20632459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20632459
systemtest 7y ago
Since the age of 11 I went to school by myself. Sports, dentist appointments and doctors too. It's very common here in Europe and I don't even live in a big city. I see kids on their bikes with a big hockey stick poking out their backpack almost daily. You mention 40 minute walking distance, that's three kilometres for a child or about 10 minutes by bicycle. Or perhaps five stops on a tram or subway. It took a lot of stress off my parents that my brother and me were independent from a young age. Living in a society where you don't need cars gives you that flexibility and ease.
- konart 7y ago
  Same for me, but I was the only child and as you've said: "Since the age of 11". It is as common here in Russia as it is in Europe. We were talknig about kids though.
rorykoehler 7y ago
In a lot of European cities kids walk and bike themselves to school.
- kalleboo 7y ago
  Even when I lived in the US as a kid me and my friends would bike to elementary school. But this was in the early 90's before everyone went completely neurotic
CalRobert 7y ago
"yeah, now imaging you have two of them going to two different schools, each 40 minutes walking distance from home" How old are these kids? Can they not walk themselves?
- konart 7y ago
  Let's say 8 and 9. They can, but they should not at that age. Not before 11-12.
mcv 7y ago
> When you have more than one - it is entrily possible they will end up going to different schools and after the school one of them had to go to the music shool and the other one to his hockey team or something etc etc. You simply can't do this without a car. In a city designed for walking and bicyling, you can do that by bike. And once they're old enough, they can do it on their own bike. Of course the city needs to be designed for that. In a city designed only for cars, you're going to need a car for everything. The big issue here is: how do we want to design our cities? > now imaging you have two of them going to two different schools, each 40 minutes walking distance from home, different directions and your office in somewhere else too. If they're going to two different schools, most likely one of them is going to secondary school and can ride their own bike, or one of them is going to a special needs school and gets picked up. At least, that's how it works around here. In any case, I don't consider 40 minutes a suitable distance for walking: take a bike. It's only a few minutes that way. That said, my wife did insist I get a driver's license when we had kids, and I did. I rarely use it, and certainly for moving kids around the city, a light cargo bike is more practical in Amsterdam.
- konart 7y ago
  >If they're going to two different schools, most likely one of them is going to secondary school and can ride their own bike, or one of them is going to a special needs school and gets picked up. At least, that's how it works around here. My other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20632459 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20632459 As for the 'secondary' school - I, for example, was attending a Gymnasium as main and a musical Lyceum as a secondary. Both since 6-7 years old. And that's pretty common over here.
  - mcv 7y ago
    A single kid going to two different schools is extremely rare here, but as it happens, that's exactly what my son has doing since he was 8: a regular school just around the corner, and a "day a week" school for gifted children which is a bit further away. I take him there by bike. A car wouldn't add much value for me there. But Amsterdam is a sizable yet compact city, which makes everything easy to reach. In a differently designed city, or a smaller town where you might have to travel to another town, things can be completely different.