8 ms·

> Recently I drove by that school, and the bike racks were gone. This is the thing: the bike racks are gone because so are the kids walking/biking to school. I

> Recently I drove by that school, and the bike racks were gone. This is the thing: the bike racks are gone because so are the kids walking/biking to school. If you let your kid do it, they'll be the only one. I walked to school in the 80s and there were lots of kids in my neighborhood walking to school at the same time. That's a very different experience. I also lived in a neighborhood that was laid out in the early 1900s. How many more kids are in car-centric culs-de-sac today? Some of these streets don't even have sidewalks. They're not even safe for adults to walk on. You can't combat this enormous societal change by making an individual effort to let your kids do more by themselves. Their physical and social environment is very different from what it was like when kids did that.

H12 4y ago
I think it's also a result of car ownership. It wasn't until the 1980s that multi-car households started being really ubiquitous. I imagine people slowly started driving their kids to school because they could, which led to other people driving their kids to school because walking/biking was unsafe due to all cars on the road. My childhood in the 90s kinda sucked by comparison because I was in small neighborhood with no kids my age locked in by a busy road that was too unsafe for me too cross on my own.
jtbayly 5y ago
> You can't combat this enormous societal change by making an individual effort to let your kids do more by themselves. Sure you can. Might not make much cultural difference, but it will make a big difference for your kids.
- CalRobert 5y ago
  I do not feel safe letting my kids walk on roads in their current state.
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    I assume you mean they don't know enough yet? You can improve their state so that crossing the street is quite safe. What do they need to know to avoid being a pedestrian fatality? Here are the top three things.[0] 1. Don't walk under the influence. 2. Don't walk at night. 3. Only cross at an intersection. [0]: https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotlight-Addendum21#:~:text=GHSA%20projects%20there%20were%206%2C721,increase%20from%201.9%20in%202019 https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotli....
    - asoneth 5y ago
      That's not particularly relevant to this discussion because walking under the influence is not a major contributor when children are hit or killed by drivers. Children also have different risk factors, for example many trucks and SUV drivers have poor visibility and cannot see sufficiently short road users that are close to the front of the vehicle, for example when stopped at a stop sign or traffic light.
      - naravara 5y ago
        Worse yet, most cars now are lifted high enough to where the block line-of-sight for pedestrians and cyclists (and even people in reasonably sized sedans and compact cars) from being able to see oncoming traffic from an intersection when they’re parked on a corner.
    - pfarrell 5y ago
      I’m going to assume you misinterpreted the GP. I read “their current state” as referring to the roads, not to the kids. For example: lack of sidewalks, roads with high speed limits, distracted drivers on phones, lack of other children walking.
      - Sirened 5y ago
        ++ A lot of people in this thread either live in wonderfully walkable places or have simply never actually tried. Y'all, Google Maps giving you walking directions is not the same thing as walkable lol. The local high school where I grew up was not exactly walkable. There were multiple uncontrolled crossings (with speed limits over 30mph) and missing sidewalks all over the place that force you to walk on the shoulder/in the gutter.
kurthr 5y ago
I guess it depends on what part of the 1900s... I grew up (also in the 70s&80s) as a "latchkey" in an area that was built in the 50s and 60s and had the same experience of walking and riding to school. This seems like a "reality TV" phenomena of the last 25 years. Certainly, there are suburban deserts that are completely unwalkable, but most housing is not like that (certainly not "affordable" housing) simply because it was built earlier. Of course this is almost entirely dependent on where you live. https://eyeonhousing.org/2018/08/half-of-us-homes-built-before-1980/ https://eyeonhousing.org/2018/08/half-of-us-homes-built-befo... High growth Tech areas like Seattle, San Jose, Austin, Phoenix are ~10x bigger than they were ~40 years ago. So those are much more likely to have this low density housing than Boston, SF, NYC. What I find weird is that even completely walkable schools/neighborhoods have parents that almost all drive kids to school every day. Parents legitimately worry about being labeled as endangering their kids, if they don't drive them. Interestingly for me this is more acute for immigrant families, who are worried about fitting in, than local families who will tell the vice principal to "shove it" when warned about the dangers of walking to school.
- jasonfarnon 5y ago
  Does the remark about immigrants make sense? The typical immigrant can't be more concerned about fitting in that the typical native. Because the typical native's behavior determines what "fitting in" means.
  - nl 5y ago
    It makes perfect sense. An immigrant trying to fit in will try to confirm to the average. An individual native who doesn't care will not care about the average.
  - ctime 5y ago
    There is a saying in Ireland called "More Irish than the Irish" and refers to immigrants and non-locals who take up all of the local culture to extreme (compared to the average) levels. Immigrants are statistically the most law abiding and often times, even conservative, members of a a community and it probably is one measure of long-term survival (esp. in the U.S. while living under the microscope of a work visa) so they need to go to great lengths to fit in and avoid even the appearance of impropriety - something the natives (and in all likelihood their children, if raised there) would take for granted. Meanwhile local citizens gather on the street corner protesting mask wearing or whatever nonsense they feel like.
lumost 5y ago
This is pretty much it. I'm a parent now, but I recall my parents telling me to walk to get to appointments and activities when I was in school back in the 90s and 00s. I never did, because it was 5+ miles through car centric roads. In the city, I see kids walking places on their own. Most places they would go are within a quarter to half mile, all of the schools that they could go to from age 3-18 are within a third of a mile.
aksss 5y ago
Heh, my neighborhood doesn't have sidewalks and it's very safe to walk in because _everybody_ walks in the middle of the street. Can be frustrating when you drive through sometimes, but I'm always mindful of the great benefit this has. Everyone in the neighborhood sees and expects people (and kids) "playing in traffic", so traffic is relatively quite calm. I've developed a bit of the view that sidewalks turn neighborhood streets into freeways. I can imagine many scenarios where this system wouldn't work as well, but in a SFH residential neighborhood without much in the way of through traffic, it works pretty well.
- Thlom 5y ago
  Yeah. In residential areas you shouldn't need sidewalks, but it requires that the street is designed for it. It must be narrow, trees along the street or other street furniture helps make it appear even narrower than it is. Naturally drivers will slow down.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    In Germany we have the concept of a "Spielstraße" (translation: Playing Street?), where walking speed is the max. accepted driving speed and playing kids have the priority in everyway. I grew up in one, it was great!
    - DocTomoe 5y ago
      Worth mentioning: Those usually are side-roads with little traffic to begin with, and cul-de-sacs.
      - hef19898 5y ago
        Sure! And they are, kind of by definition, residential areas with lot's of young families and children.
rtlfe 5y ago
> You can't combat this enormous societal change by making an individual effort to let your kids do more by themselves. Maybe not, but you can do things like: * Live downtown instead of in a suburb * Ask your school / DOT to close the street in front of the school during dropoff and pickup hours * Walk with your kid to school instead of driving them * Support higher-density development in your area
- Tagbert 5y ago
  If you live downtown you are unlikely to have a grade school in your area from what I can see of any American cities. Families with school aged children don’t tend to live in the downtowns. Older suburbs are much more walkable in terms of kids walking to school with sidewalks and fewer vehicles than an urban center.
- MiddleEndian 5y ago
  I think it depends on the city and suburb. I grew up in a fairly large and fairly dense (by suburb standards) suburban city of Boston and it was quite walkable as a child (and also had the benefit of having a few MBTA stops). I live in the middle of downtown Boston now and while I find it fantastic as a somewhat immature adult, I wouldn't say it's especially child-friendly. That being said, I have seen many other suburbs (looking at you, various places in Connecticut) that don't even have sidewalks. That cannot be good for anyone. And Boston certainly has more child-friendly neighborhoods as well.
- adrianN 5y ago
  You can ask your DOT to close the street in front of the school, but, at least where I live, even if they are supportive it is likely that your child will be out of school before something actually happens. Increasing the density of an area also takes years or even decades.
asoneth 5y ago
I mostly agree. The majority of neighborhoods in the US are designed to support enormous vehicles driving as fast as they can and are therefore an unnecessarily hostile environment for everyone else. I would not choose to risk my children walking on their own just to make a point or "be the change" in a place like that. However you can choose where to live. there are still plenty of walkable neighborhoods in cities, suburbs, small towns, etc. The issue is that you will have to find them and then you will have to pay more for the privilege of living there. With respect to finding them, we used national commuting mode share and various websites to pick a handful of regions that had a reputation for walkability, spent a bit of time on Google Maps, called the schools to inquire about their mode share (e.g. percent of children who walk/bike minus the percent driven by parents), chatted with the folks who run the state's Safe Routes to School program, and rented an apartment while we spent a couple months biking around the candidate neighborhoods/towns, especially during rush hour. With respect to cost we were priced out of the really walkable areas but were able to find something where many kids walk or bike to school on their own in our price range. Based on price premium for walkable areas it seems that a lot of home buyers prioritize the same things we do but not a lot of new neighborhoods are built to prioritize walking. It felt like there were a lot of people competing for a relatively fixed pool of (typically old) neighborhoods.

H12 4y ago

I think it's also a result of car ownership. It wasn't until the 1980s that multi-car households started being really ubiquitous. I imagine people slowly started driving their kids to school because they could, which led to other people driving their kids to school because walking/biking was unsafe due to all cars on the road. My childhood in the 90s kinda sucked by comparison because I was in small neighborhood with no kids my age locked in by a busy road that was too unsafe for me too cross on my own.

jtbayly 5y ago

> You can't combat this enormous societal change by making an individual effort to let your kids do more by themselves. Sure you can. Might not make much cultural difference, but it will make a big difference for your kids.

CalRobert 5y ago
I do not feel safe letting my kids walk on roads in their current state.
- jtbayly 5y ago
  I assume you mean they don't know enough yet? You can improve their state so that crossing the street is quite safe. What do they need to know to avoid being a pedestrian fatality? Here are the top three things.[0] 1. Don't walk under the influence. 2. Don't walk at night. 3. Only cross at an intersection. [0]: https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotlight-Addendum21#:~:text=GHSA%20projects%20there%20were%206%2C721,increase%20from%201.9%20in%202019 https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotli....
  - asoneth 5y ago
    That's not particularly relevant to this discussion because walking under the influence is not a major contributor when children are hit or killed by drivers. Children also have different risk factors, for example many trucks and SUV drivers have poor visibility and cannot see sufficiently short road users that are close to the front of the vehicle, for example when stopped at a stop sign or traffic light.
    - naravara 5y ago
      Worse yet, most cars now are lifted high enough to where the block line-of-sight for pedestrians and cyclists (and even people in reasonably sized sedans and compact cars) from being able to see oncoming traffic from an intersection when they’re parked on a corner.
  - pfarrell 5y ago
    I’m going to assume you misinterpreted the GP. I read “their current state” as referring to the roads, not to the kids. For example: lack of sidewalks, roads with high speed limits, distracted drivers on phones, lack of other children walking.
    - Sirened 5y ago
      ++ A lot of people in this thread either live in wonderfully walkable places or have simply never actually tried. Y'all, Google Maps giving you walking directions is not the same thing as walkable lol. The local high school where I grew up was not exactly walkable. There were multiple uncontrolled crossings (with speed limits over 30mph) and missing sidewalks all over the place that force you to walk on the shoulder/in the gutter.

kurthr 5y ago

I guess it depends on what part of the 1900s... I grew up (also in the 70s&80s) as a "latchkey" in an area that was built in the 50s and 60s and had the same experience of walking and riding to school. This seems like a "reality TV" phenomena of the last 25 years. Certainly, there are suburban deserts that are completely unwalkable, but most housing is not like that (certainly not "affordable" housing) simply because it was built earlier. Of course this is almost entirely dependent on where you live. https://eyeonhousing.org/2018/08/half-of-us-homes-built-before-1980/ https://eyeonhousing.org/2018/08/half-of-us-homes-built-befo... High growth Tech areas like Seattle, San Jose, Austin, Phoenix are ~10x bigger than they were ~40 years ago. So those are much more likely to have this low density housing than Boston, SF, NYC. What I find weird is that even completely walkable schools/neighborhoods have parents that almost all drive kids to school every day. Parents legitimately worry about being labeled as endangering their kids, if they don't drive them. Interestingly for me this is more acute for immigrant families, who are worried about fitting in, than local families who will tell the vice principal to "shove it" when warned about the dangers of walking to school.

jasonfarnon 5y ago
Does the remark about immigrants make sense? The typical immigrant can't be more concerned about fitting in that the typical native. Because the typical native's behavior determines what "fitting in" means.
- nl 5y ago
  It makes perfect sense. An immigrant trying to fit in will try to confirm to the average. An individual native who doesn't care will not care about the average.
- ctime 5y ago
  There is a saying in Ireland called "More Irish than the Irish" and refers to immigrants and non-locals who take up all of the local culture to extreme (compared to the average) levels. Immigrants are statistically the most law abiding and often times, even conservative, members of a a community and it probably is one measure of long-term survival (esp. in the U.S. while living under the microscope of a work visa) so they need to go to great lengths to fit in and avoid even the appearance of impropriety - something the natives (and in all likelihood their children, if raised there) would take for granted. Meanwhile local citizens gather on the street corner protesting mask wearing or whatever nonsense they feel like.

lumost 5y ago

This is pretty much it. I'm a parent now, but I recall my parents telling me to walk to get to appointments and activities when I was in school back in the 90s and 00s. I never did, because it was 5+ miles through car centric roads. In the city, I see kids walking places on their own. Most places they would go are within a quarter to half mile, all of the schools that they could go to from age 3-18 are within a third of a mile.

aksss 5y ago

Heh, my neighborhood doesn't have sidewalks and it's very safe to walk in because _everybody_ walks in the middle of the street. Can be frustrating when you drive through sometimes, but I'm always mindful of the great benefit this has. Everyone in the neighborhood sees and expects people (and kids) "playing in traffic", so traffic is relatively quite calm. I've developed a bit of the view that sidewalks turn neighborhood streets into freeways. I can imagine many scenarios where this system wouldn't work as well, but in a SFH residential neighborhood without much in the way of through traffic, it works pretty well.

Thlom 5y ago
Yeah. In residential areas you shouldn't need sidewalks, but it requires that the street is designed for it. It must be narrow, trees along the street or other street furniture helps make it appear even narrower than it is. Naturally drivers will slow down.
- hef19898 5y ago
  In Germany we have the concept of a "Spielstraße" (translation: Playing Street?), where walking speed is the max. accepted driving speed and playing kids have the priority in everyway. I grew up in one, it was great!
  - DocTomoe 5y ago
    Worth mentioning: Those usually are side-roads with little traffic to begin with, and cul-de-sacs.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      Sure! And they are, kind of by definition, residential areas with lot's of young families and children.

rtlfe 5y ago

> You can't combat this enormous societal change by making an individual effort to let your kids do more by themselves. Maybe not, but you can do things like: * Live downtown instead of in a suburb * Ask your school / DOT to close the street in front of the school during dropoff and pickup hours * Walk with your kid to school instead of driving them * Support higher-density development in your area

Tagbert 5y ago
If you live downtown you are unlikely to have a grade school in your area from what I can see of any American cities. Families with school aged children don’t tend to live in the downtowns. Older suburbs are much more walkable in terms of kids walking to school with sidewalks and fewer vehicles than an urban center.
MiddleEndian 5y ago
I think it depends on the city and suburb. I grew up in a fairly large and fairly dense (by suburb standards) suburban city of Boston and it was quite walkable as a child (and also had the benefit of having a few MBTA stops). I live in the middle of downtown Boston now and while I find it fantastic as a somewhat immature adult, I wouldn't say it's especially child-friendly. That being said, I have seen many other suburbs (looking at you, various places in Connecticut) that don't even have sidewalks. That cannot be good for anyone. And Boston certainly has more child-friendly neighborhoods as well.
adrianN 5y ago
You can ask your DOT to close the street in front of the school, but, at least where I live, even if they are supportive it is likely that your child will be out of school before something actually happens. Increasing the density of an area also takes years or even decades.

asoneth 5y ago

I mostly agree. The majority of neighborhoods in the US are designed to support enormous vehicles driving as fast as they can and are therefore an unnecessarily hostile environment for everyone else. I would not choose to risk my children walking on their own just to make a point or "be the change" in a place like that. However you can choose where to live. there are still plenty of walkable neighborhoods in cities, suburbs, small towns, etc. The issue is that you will have to find them and then you will have to pay more for the privilege of living there. With respect to finding them, we used national commuting mode share and various websites to pick a handful of regions that had a reputation for walkability, spent a bit of time on Google Maps, called the schools to inquire about their mode share (e.g. percent of children who walk/bike minus the percent driven by parents), chatted with the folks who run the state's Safe Routes to School program, and rented an apartment while we spent a couple months biking around the candidate neighborhoods/towns, especially during rush hour. With respect to cost we were priced out of the really walkable areas but were able to find something where many kids walk or bike to school on their own in our price range. Based on price premium for walkable areas it seems that a lot of home buyers prioritize the same things we do but not a lot of new neighborhoods are built to prioritize walking. It felt like there were a lot of people competing for a relatively fixed pool of (typically old) neighborhoods.