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I think there are 2 different things being discussed here: 1. Commuting via school bus vs. parents' cars 2. Commuting via public bus In the US, at least for

I think there are 2 different things being discussed here: 1. Commuting via school bus vs. parents' cars 2. Commuting via public bus In the US, at least for the first 25 years of my life, most people I knew got to school by school bus unless they lived within walking distance or were old enough to drive themselves. Some kids parents would drive them, but it usually was either due to it being too cold to walk (or wait for the bus), a special occasion where they needed to bring in some large or fragile object for a project, or them being in an unincorporated part of the town that the school busses didn't serve. (I think this was fairly rare.) Since I don't have kids of my own, I don't know how it's changed in the last 25 years, but I still see school busses all over my current city (Los Angeles), so they're still a thing. Where I grew up in a rural part of the MidWest, there were no public buses. Our town was too small for them to run efficiently.

karmelapple 4y ago
I lived in a not-too-rural city in the Midwest of about 40,000 at the time, and we still didn’t have school busing for anyone in the city. It was only for rural folks. I was forced to get my drivers’ license at 16 to drive 10 min to school because the alternative was walking 1.2 hours every morning one way ti get to school… meaning leaving the house at around 6:00am. The city had no city bus, so there was zero public transit option. That was weird.
- olivermuty 4y ago
  Bike not an option?
  - watwut 4y ago
    Quite possibly not. It is reasonably safe only if infrastructure allows it. Biking on a major road where a bunch of teenagers drives the car is neither healthy nor safe.
  - spicyusername 4y ago
    Most parts of the U.S. are not well designed for bikes or pedestrians, only cars. Also, many schools in the U.S. have really large districts, so some students live really far from the school. In many places this would mean children would be required to bike on 55mph+ 5-lane roads with no shoulder and no bike lane for 5-20+ miles. Nearly all public schools in the U.S. provide a free bus system for all students for this reason.
    - gabereiser 4y ago
      This was me in elementary school. I went to a private school briefly where there wasn’t a bus and my mother had to work so I had to bike 20 miles to school through rush hour traffic at 11 years old.
      - karmelapple 4y ago
        Yikes! Thank goodness you got through it, and hopefully they've started offering buses or there are bike lanes in your city.
    - karmelapple 4y ago
      That was the weird part about our city: they simply did not offer it. Literally every family was expected to have a car, and get their child to school in a car... or somehow have them walk, but apparently not too far, since temperatures would routinely dip to single digits Fahrenheit throughout the winter months.
  - karmelapple 4y ago
    A little story to give you an idea: I rode a bike on our quiet neighborhood streets when I was about 12. I was returning a rented video game back to the store. I generally stayed to the side of the main lane, where cars are typically parked on the street. However, in one area, cars were parked, so I had to go around them. In spite of me going slowly, and not making any kind of darting move - I gradually moved over and looked over my shoulder for many seconds before I came towards the parked cars - someone behind me yelled a curse word at me as they passed me and flipped me off. I had the sheer audacity of riding a bike on a street. # # # Sidewalks are not really intended for riding bikes, but that was the only place I felt somewhat safe riding them, other than the dedicated walking and bike paths that stretched around the outside of our city and did not get to within half a mile of my high school. And riding a bike as a 16 year old from December 1 - March 15 through likely multiple inches of snow on the ground, and certainly on icy conditions? No way. The big puffy tires that are somewhat popular today in winter were something I hadn't even heard of in the 1990s. Edit: and as other commenters mentioned, no bike lanes. Bike lanes on a road in that city were not present until 2012, many years after I was in high school, and even now are being questioned by the mayor of the city: https://www.kfyrtv.com/2022/05/30/safe-biking-routes-bismarck-mandan/ https://www.kfyrtv.com/2022/05/30/safe-biking-routes-bismarc... So... no, it was not an option. If I had suggested it, my parents, friends, classmates, and teachers would likely all have tried to talk me out of it.

karmelapple 4y ago

I lived in a not-too-rural city in the Midwest of about 40,000 at the time, and we still didn’t have school busing for anyone in the city. It was only for rural folks. I was forced to get my drivers’ license at 16 to drive 10 min to school because the alternative was walking 1.2 hours every morning one way ti get to school… meaning leaving the house at around 6:00am. The city had no city bus, so there was zero public transit option. That was weird.

olivermuty 4y ago
Bike not an option?
- watwut 4y ago
  Quite possibly not. It is reasonably safe only if infrastructure allows it. Biking on a major road where a bunch of teenagers drives the car is neither healthy nor safe.
- spicyusername 4y ago
  Most parts of the U.S. are not well designed for bikes or pedestrians, only cars. Also, many schools in the U.S. have really large districts, so some students live really far from the school. In many places this would mean children would be required to bike on 55mph+ 5-lane roads with no shoulder and no bike lane for 5-20+ miles. Nearly all public schools in the U.S. provide a free bus system for all students for this reason.
  - gabereiser 4y ago
    This was me in elementary school. I went to a private school briefly where there wasn’t a bus and my mother had to work so I had to bike 20 miles to school through rush hour traffic at 11 years old.
    - karmelapple 4y ago
      Yikes! Thank goodness you got through it, and hopefully they've started offering buses or there are bike lanes in your city.
  - karmelapple 4y ago
    That was the weird part about our city: they simply did not offer it. Literally every family was expected to have a car, and get their child to school in a car... or somehow have them walk, but apparently not too far, since temperatures would routinely dip to single digits Fahrenheit throughout the winter months.
- karmelapple 4y ago
  A little story to give you an idea: I rode a bike on our quiet neighborhood streets when I was about 12. I was returning a rented video game back to the store. I generally stayed to the side of the main lane, where cars are typically parked on the street. However, in one area, cars were parked, so I had to go around them. In spite of me going slowly, and not making any kind of darting move - I gradually moved over and looked over my shoulder for many seconds before I came towards the parked cars - someone behind me yelled a curse word at me as they passed me and flipped me off. I had the sheer audacity of riding a bike on a street. # # # Sidewalks are not really intended for riding bikes, but that was the only place I felt somewhat safe riding them, other than the dedicated walking and bike paths that stretched around the outside of our city and did not get to within half a mile of my high school. And riding a bike as a 16 year old from December 1 - March 15 through likely multiple inches of snow on the ground, and certainly on icy conditions? No way. The big puffy tires that are somewhat popular today in winter were something I hadn't even heard of in the 1990s. Edit: and as other commenters mentioned, no bike lanes. Bike lanes on a road in that city were not present until 2012, many years after I was in high school, and even now are being questioned by the mayor of the city: https://www.kfyrtv.com/2022/05/30/safe-biking-routes-bismarck-mandan/ https://www.kfyrtv.com/2022/05/30/safe-biking-routes-bismarc... So... no, it was not an option. If I had suggested it, my parents, friends, classmates, and teachers would likely all have tried to talk me out of it.