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> I live in Berlin since 2018 and use public transport for almost every commute How many kids do you have to drop off at school on your way to work? In German

> I live in Berlin since 2018 and use public transport for almost every commute How many kids do you have to drop off at school on your way to work? In Germany overall, 68% of people regularly drive, versus just 14% who use public transit: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germans-commute-car-insincere-german-climate-policy https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germans-commute-car-ins.... And Germany is about as dense overall as the state of Maryland, and well over twice as dense as California.

debesyla 1y ago
Crazy idea, but why do kids need dropping them off to school? If school is not further than 1 km, kid can just walk there. And in most German (and other European) cities schools are nearby. And for locations that are remote, there are school buses, and public buses too... Kid transportation is important, but it doesn't have to be cars. (I won't even go into kids who bycicle to their schools.) Of course, I understand that for kindergarten it's a different topic, but if we are taking about schools a person is already of age where they know where their home is and where they are going to.
- hokumguru 1y ago
  You’re going to let your first grader (6yo) use public transit in America solo? In Copenhagen maybe but sounds like lunacy here.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    > You’re going to let your first grader (6yo) use public transit in America solo? In Copenhagen maybe but sounds like lunacy here. I mean, that's the exact point being made. The problem isn't public transport, it's American public transport. The USA could just copy what works from the rest of the world, if only it didn't already suffer the misapprehension of being the best at absolutely everything and having nothing to learn.
    - mlyle 1y ago
      The rest of the world doesn't understand the US's problems. There are portions of the problem that are as easy as cutting and pasting transit systems from elsewhere, but unfortunately those are the easy parts. Poverty, crime, sprawl, and untreated mental illness all really complicate the public transit situation for the US, and they feed upon themselves and create a terrible negative feedback loop for transit.
      - ben_w 1y ago
        > Poverty, crime, sprawl, and untreated mental illness all really complicate the public transit situation for the US, and they feed upon themselves and create a terrible negative feedback loop for transit. These are also places where the USA could do better if it didn't think it was already the best. Like, for crime, the USA treats gun control as outside the Overton Window saying e.g. "we need guns for self defence", while the UK is apparently a crime-free haven in comparison because the British *Police* are not armed by default and overwhelmingly don't want to be. Sprawl is harder to fix once the cities are built. But even dense cores I've seen in the USA don't have great public transit networks. I have absolutely no idea why, or even if, America has more untreated mental health issues than Europe in general. But your governments at each level ought to.
        tolien 1y ago
        > Like, for crime, the USA treats gun control as outside the Overton Window saying e.g. "we need guns for self defence" Without a hint of the self-awareness that the most likely person to be shot by your gun is yourself, either in the obvious case of suicide or where the gun has been taken from you either by family or theft.
        mlyle 1y ago
        They're all interrelated problems with multidecade response times to policy and dispute about the best path to fixing them. And the solutions to each aren't the same as in Europe, and the US has a hard time with consistent policy when there's no immediate payoff.
general1726 1y ago
> How many kids do you have to drop off at school on your way to work? This is a very American question to ask. Why you should drop them off? Just give them public transportation pass, drill the route with them few times and off they go. Kids are not stupid.
ashdksnndck 1y ago
When I grew up (in America) there was a “school bus” that came to everyone’s house and took us all to school. I don’t know what happened where parents now all have to take a huge amount of time out of their day to do a second and third commute dropping off and picking up kids from school. Whatever is going on there, it seems like a huge regression.
bgwalter 1y ago
Kids walk or cycle to school autonomously from the age of 6 in many other countries than the US.
ben_w 1y ago
> How many kids do you have to drop off at school on your way to work? Sadly none, but if I did the nearest school is two stops along the bus route that passes almost by my front door. Also, I can say from experience, that a lot of kids do use normal public transport here. Furthermore, school hours don't line up with work days. Back when I was a kid myself, living in the UK, I was driven to and from infant (K-3) school, walked to middle school (4-6), and was given a bus pass and just expected to be able to figure it out for myself for secondary school (7-11). But even the primary school trip was never driven by my working dad. Different school hours here in Germany than back in the UK, but neither lines up with office hours. > In Germany overall, 68% of people regularly drive, versus just 14% who use public transit: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germans-commute-car-ins https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germans-commute-car-ins.... And Germany is about as dense overall as the state of Maryland, and well over twice as dense as California. The correct metric for commuting isn't the overall density, as vanishingly few people are attempting to cross farms (or in CA's case, winding mountain roads surrounded by flammable trees) on any given day. Look at each municipal commuter area separately for that, e.g. Berlin's commuter zone population is somewhat less than either the Bay Area or Los Angeles commuter zones, and all three are loosely-coherent commuter regions.
supplied_demand 1y ago
== How many kids do you have to drop off at school on your way to work?== This is the definition of moving goalposts. What about this work-from-home that everybody on HN is always hyping? People in cities can often just walk their kids to school. Plenty of students in Chicago take the bus.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
NekkoDroid 1y ago
I live accross from an elementary school and most of the children either walk (/bus + walk), take their scooter or their bike to arrive. Not to say the street isn't filled with cars before school starts, but considering how many children the school teaches it most certainly isn't the majority.
enslavedrobot 1y ago
So many posters I this thread are obviously child free. The idea of carting kids to soccer practice on the bus, or shopping for a family of 4 and taking the bus with 100 pounds of groceries is absurd. I guarantee half the people posting here will change their tune as soon as they have any responsibility beyond themselves. I rode the bus for 15 years...when I only had to take care of myself.
- queenkjuul 1y ago
  If i had kids, they could walk to the school and soccer field in the neighborhood in under 10 minutes. There's a playground at the end of the block. There's a high school a 15 minute walk away, and i would trust a teenager to take the bus to baseball practice or whatever. I see families on the train and bus all the time. It's actually very easy to take a stroller on the train. Why do people insist on buying 100lbs of groceries at a time, either?
- mlyle 1y ago
  In a whole lot of the world, children from 6-10 have a lot of responsibility and navigate public transit, etc, themselves. Of course, those countries are dramatically safer than the US. It wasn't so long ago that kids even did this in the US, though the US was even more dangerous then. The fact that kids have such a tiny range and have their basic needs ministered to such an extent by adults is not good for the kids and isn't good for the adults.
- ben_w 1y ago
  My coworkers had kids, and a longer commute, and still took public transit to get to work. > The idea of carting kids to soccer practice on the bus, 10 minute walk, not that I was interested in soccer as a kid (or as an adult). > or shopping for a family of 4 and taking the bus with 100 pounds of groceries is absurd. We have this fantastic new invention in Europe, called "deliveries". It's like Amazon, but it's your own supermarket. Also, see previous point about building supplies. 25 kg may be ~55 lb not 100, but I have hauled both a 25 kg bag of cement and on a separate occasion a 25 kg bag of decorative rocks, in my rucksack, on a bus. I have *literally* seen someone take an actual kitchen sink with cabinet on the tram around here, something like this: https://www.amazon.de/Küchenschrank-Küchenspüle-Unterschrank-Waschbecken-Spülenschrank/dp/B0C1494HD7 https://www.amazon.de/Küchenschrank-Küchenspüle-Unterschrank... Even on the one time I wanted more than I could carry (four 25kg bags of cement at once, and it seems these stores don't deliver specifically cement despite delivering everything else I've ever wanted), is was a case of "ask a friendly neighbour" not "buy your own car just for this"; but even if the neighbours had not been available, the building supplier does have rental vans specifically for people buying lots of stuff, so still no need to buy a car for this very occasional scenario that the thing you want is something they sell but don't deliver and it's too big or heavy to take on the bus. Also, lunch breaks are generally long enough, and stores numerous enough and convenient enough, to do whatever top-up shopping is needed every day (except Sunday) rather than putting the whole thing into a single massive shop — and even if I forget shopping during lunch, my previous commute took me past at least 7 supermarkets and other decent-sized stores, plus two entire shopping malls at exactly where I changed lines — and additional options on two more shopping malls if I took a marginally longer route than my default. Other things you may find ridiculous "what about a hospital visit!": it is between "very cheap" and "free" to call an ambulance here, and not "unaffordable even if you need it" like I keep hearing it is in the USA; and also the nearest hospital is a 16 minute public transport route, of which 14 is "bus" and there's a total of 100m walking (in total between both ends) going between the bus stops and the building doors. Strollers/push chairs/wheelchairs: there's dedicated space on the bus, and more than enough space on the trains even on the ones without designated zones for them (and many do have dedicated zones for them and bikes). (One thing I don't know and don't claim to know is how good in practice wheelchair access is in Berlin stations: I do know that the London network wasn't as good as it needed to be when I left the UK, but that's all).

debesyla 1y ago

Crazy idea, but why do kids need dropping them off to school? If school is not further than 1 km, kid can just walk there. And in most German (and other European) cities schools are nearby. And for locations that are remote, there are school buses, and public buses too... Kid transportation is important, but it doesn't have to be cars. (I won't even go into kids who bycicle to their schools.) Of course, I understand that for kindergarten it's a different topic, but if we are taking about schools a person is already of age where they know where their home is and where they are going to.

hokumguru 1y ago
You’re going to let your first grader (6yo) use public transit in America solo? In Copenhagen maybe but sounds like lunacy here.
- ben_w 1y ago
  > You’re going to let your first grader (6yo) use public transit in America solo? In Copenhagen maybe but sounds like lunacy here. I mean, that's the exact point being made. The problem isn't public transport, it's American public transport. The USA could just copy what works from the rest of the world, if only it didn't already suffer the misapprehension of being the best at absolutely everything and having nothing to learn.
  - mlyle 1y ago
    The rest of the world doesn't understand the US's problems. There are portions of the problem that are as easy as cutting and pasting transit systems from elsewhere, but unfortunately those are the easy parts. Poverty, crime, sprawl, and untreated mental illness all really complicate the public transit situation for the US, and they feed upon themselves and create a terrible negative feedback loop for transit.
    - ben_w 1y ago
      > Poverty, crime, sprawl, and untreated mental illness all really complicate the public transit situation for the US, and they feed upon themselves and create a terrible negative feedback loop for transit. These are also places where the USA could do better if it didn't think it was already the best. Like, for crime, the USA treats gun control as outside the Overton Window saying e.g. "we need guns for self defence", while the UK is apparently a crime-free haven in comparison because the British *Police* are not armed by default and overwhelmingly don't want to be. Sprawl is harder to fix once the cities are built. But even dense cores I've seen in the USA don't have great public transit networks. I have absolutely no idea why, or even if, America has more untreated mental health issues than Europe in general. But your governments at each level ought to.
      - tolien 1y ago
        > Like, for crime, the USA treats gun control as outside the Overton Window saying e.g. "we need guns for self defence" Without a hint of the self-awareness that the most likely person to be shot by your gun is yourself, either in the obvious case of suicide or where the gun has been taken from you either by family or theft.
      - mlyle 1y ago
        They're all interrelated problems with multidecade response times to policy and dispute about the best path to fixing them. And the solutions to each aren't the same as in Europe, and the US has a hard time with consistent policy when there's no immediate payoff.

general1726 1y ago

> How many kids do you have to drop off at school on your way to work? This is a very American question to ask. Why you should drop them off? Just give them public transportation pass, drill the route with them few times and off they go. Kids are not stupid.

ashdksnndck 1y ago

When I grew up (in America) there was a “school bus” that came to everyone’s house and took us all to school. I don’t know what happened where parents now all have to take a huge amount of time out of their day to do a second and third commute dropping off and picking up kids from school. Whatever is going on there, it seems like a huge regression.

bgwalter 1y ago

Kids walk or cycle to school autonomously from the age of 6 in many other countries than the US.

ben_w 1y ago

> How many kids do you have to drop off at school on your way to work? Sadly none, but if I did the nearest school is two stops along the bus route that passes almost by my front door. Also, I can say from experience, that a lot of kids do use normal public transport here. Furthermore, school hours don't line up with work days. Back when I was a kid myself, living in the UK, I was driven to and from infant (K-3) school, walked to middle school (4-6), and was given a bus pass and just expected to be able to figure it out for myself for secondary school (7-11). But even the primary school trip was never driven by my working dad. Different school hours here in Germany than back in the UK, but neither lines up with office hours. > In Germany overall, 68% of people regularly drive, versus just 14% who use public transit: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germans-commute-car-ins https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germans-commute-car-ins.... And Germany is about as dense overall as the state of Maryland, and well over twice as dense as California. The correct metric for commuting isn't the overall density, as vanishingly few people are attempting to cross farms (or in CA's case, winding mountain roads surrounded by flammable trees) on any given day. Look at each municipal commuter area separately for that, e.g. Berlin's commuter zone population is somewhat less than either the Bay Area or Los Angeles commuter zones, and all three are loosely-coherent commuter regions.

supplied_demand 1y ago

== How many kids do you have to drop off at school on your way to work?== This is the definition of moving goalposts. What about this work-from-home that everybody on HN is always hyping? People in cities can often just walk their kids to school. Plenty of students in Chicago take the bus.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

NekkoDroid 1y ago

I live accross from an elementary school and most of the children either walk (/bus + walk), take their scooter or their bike to arrive. Not to say the street isn't filled with cars before school starts, but considering how many children the school teaches it most certainly isn't the majority.

enslavedrobot 1y ago

So many posters I this thread are obviously child free. The idea of carting kids to soccer practice on the bus, or shopping for a family of 4 and taking the bus with 100 pounds of groceries is absurd. I guarantee half the people posting here will change their tune as soon as they have any responsibility beyond themselves. I rode the bus for 15 years...when I only had to take care of myself.

queenkjuul 1y ago
If i had kids, they could walk to the school and soccer field in the neighborhood in under 10 minutes. There's a playground at the end of the block. There's a high school a 15 minute walk away, and i would trust a teenager to take the bus to baseball practice or whatever. I see families on the train and bus all the time. It's actually very easy to take a stroller on the train. Why do people insist on buying 100lbs of groceries at a time, either?
mlyle 1y ago
In a whole lot of the world, children from 6-10 have a lot of responsibility and navigate public transit, etc, themselves. Of course, those countries are dramatically safer than the US. It wasn't so long ago that kids even did this in the US, though the US was even more dangerous then. The fact that kids have such a tiny range and have their basic needs ministered to such an extent by adults is not good for the kids and isn't good for the adults.
ben_w 1y ago
My coworkers had kids, and a longer commute, and still took public transit to get to work. > The idea of carting kids to soccer practice on the bus, 10 minute walk, not that I was interested in soccer as a kid (or as an adult). > or shopping for a family of 4 and taking the bus with 100 pounds of groceries is absurd. We have this fantastic new invention in Europe, called "deliveries". It's like Amazon, but it's your own supermarket. Also, see previous point about building supplies. 25 kg may be ~55 lb not 100, but I have hauled both a 25 kg bag of cement and on a separate occasion a 25 kg bag of decorative rocks, in my rucksack, on a bus. I have *literally* seen someone take an actual kitchen sink with cabinet on the tram around here, something like this: https://www.amazon.de/Küchenschrank-Küchenspüle-Unterschrank-Waschbecken-Spülenschrank/dp/B0C1494HD7 https://www.amazon.de/Küchenschrank-Küchenspüle-Unterschrank... Even on the one time I wanted more than I could carry (four 25kg bags of cement at once, and it seems these stores don't deliver specifically cement despite delivering everything else I've ever wanted), is was a case of "ask a friendly neighbour" not "buy your own car just for this"; but even if the neighbours had not been available, the building supplier does have rental vans specifically for people buying lots of stuff, so still no need to buy a car for this very occasional scenario that the thing you want is something they sell but don't deliver and it's too big or heavy to take on the bus. Also, lunch breaks are generally long enough, and stores numerous enough and convenient enough, to do whatever top-up shopping is needed every day (except Sunday) rather than putting the whole thing into a single massive shop — and even if I forget shopping during lunch, my previous commute took me past at least 7 supermarkets and other decent-sized stores, plus two entire shopping malls at exactly where I changed lines — and additional options on two more shopping malls if I took a marginally longer route than my default. Other things you may find ridiculous "what about a hospital visit!": it is between "very cheap" and "free" to call an ambulance here, and not "unaffordable even if you need it" like I keep hearing it is in the USA; and also the nearest hospital is a 16 minute public transport route, of which 14 is "bus" and there's a total of 100m walking (in total between both ends) going between the bus stops and the building doors. Strollers/push chairs/wheelchairs: there's dedicated space on the bus, and more than enough space on the trains even on the ones without designated zones for them (and many do have dedicated zones for them and bikes). (One thing I don't know and don't claim to know is how good in practice wheelchair access is in Berlin stations: I do know that the London network wasn't as good as it needed to be when I left the UK, but that's all).