Commuting - Your Kids and Their Commute

School has started here and we took the bus on Monday because we had to pack a lot of school supplies and because the weather was sucktastic... it was almost freezing in the am.

We are hoping that our weather picks up so that our 14km daily commute can be enjoyed through September and last year we rode well into October and the girls only packed it in when it got down to 2C in the mornings.

So who else has kids who ride to school daily ?

Are they in the minority like my kids ?

The bike racks at my children's school are all but empty and when it gets cool theirs are the only bikes that are seen parked there.

P.S. My 10 year old wants me to stud her mtb tyres so she can ride in the winter... but think she is capable of doing this herself. :)

my 11 yo son is a fair weather commuter- 16 km RT mostly on dirt/gravel roads and several hundred ft of climbing.
neither the roads or conditions are really conductive to a nice commute; however he is quite proud when he commutes and "beats" the school bus home.

My kid (1st grade) is close enough to just walk. Makes life way easier than having to deal with bikes or the bus. The 2 year old gets a 2 mile (OW) ride to daycare in the trailer.

Sorry, my kid is too young for me to actually answer this question, but I remember reading recently on these forums about some schools that are actually prohibiting their students from riding their bikes to school. In light of that, it was nice to see the article in the local paper this morning about a bunch of new schools that just opened this year, where it says:


Principals at the schools also love the environmental features of the buildings, which are designed to meet the silver designation under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. All have motion-sensitive lights in every room that turn on automatically when they sense activity and turn off after rooms fall quiet. Parking lots feature spaces for carpoolers, electric-car charging stations and plenty of bike racks.

School has started here and we took the bus on Monday because we had to pack a lot of school supplies and because the weather was sucktastic... it was almost freezing in the am.

We are hoping that our weather picks up so that our 14km daily commute can be enjoyed through September and last year we rode well into October and the girls only packed it in when it got down to 2C in the mornings.

So who else has kids who ride to school daily ?

Are they in the minority like my kids ?

The bike racks at my children's school are all but empty and when it gets cool theirs are the only bikes that are seen parked there.

P.S. My 10 year old wants me to stud her mtb tyres so she can ride in the winter... but think she is capable of doing this herself. :)

My wife or I will ride to school with the kids once in a while. It's about 4 miles. It's a small Catholic school and right now there is no busing. A lot of the kids live close enough to walk or bike but the racks are not conducive to actually keeping a bike there. The two racks are at the top of steep hill so that your wheel is about 6 inches lower than the front when in the rack. They sit right up against a fence too.

The biggest impediment to riding a bike there? My son doesn't like to be seen riding around in his school uniform.

School here starts a week from today.

In the winter (pretty much Nov-Apr) my son's is the only bike at the rack (give or take undergrad interns or teaching students who might be at his grade school). Bikers pick up in mid May, so for the last month basically. He's entering 4th grade, has been riding daily since day 1 of K.

I was thining this might be my kids' week of epic commuting, they are going to the same camp ~6 miles from home (1 mile short of my office), but they seem to be sooooo beat after the day of camp that my wife doesn't think they need the ride, and she might be right.

Next week our 5 yr old starts K and she should be parking next to her big bro.

Kudos to everyone who's kiddos are making the extra effort to ride to school. I wish my parents would have let me as a kid.



The biggest impediment to riding a bike there? My son doesn't like to be seen riding around in his school uniform.

That may very well be an issue through out life. Many people who commute to work must either store work clothes or bring them in. They then must also arrive early enough to clean up/change. Don't know if that is feasable, but if so is good to learn early. If it helps I have learned many garments properly folded and then rolled do not wrinkle.

Kudos to everyone who's kiddos are making the extra effort to ride to school. I wish my parents would have let me as a kid.



That may very well be an issue through out life. Many people who commute to work must either store work clothes or bring them in. They then must also arrive early enough to clean up/change. Don't know if that is feasable, but if so is good to learn early. If it helps I have learned many garments properly folded and then rolled do not wrinkle.

About half of the school year they wouldn't ride their bikes anyway because it's winter. It's also far enough that it would mean having to get up earlier and if you add changing to the mix, that would be earlier still. So for them riding will only be a once in awhile thing. There's a remote chance we'll move closer to the school because we like the area and we already hang out with a lot of the parents, but we like where we currently live too.

My (8 year old) daughter's school is 3.5 miles away. I'm pretty sure she could make it both ways (given enough time: She is SOOO slow!) But she would have to cross 2 very busy suburban arteries and take one of those over I-5 on a very bike unfriendly overpass. Even if I could talk her into to it, there's no chance I could convince her mother!

Too bad, because they canceled the school bus this year. My wife loads her bike into the car, takes my daughter to school, parks about two miles from the school (and home), then rides to work. When I get off work I ride my bike to the car, load it in the car, pick up my daughter and go home. We all hate this routine, but it was the best we could come up with.

We've got the opposite weather problem. It's supposed to be 103 F (that's 40C) tomorrow. YUCK! Even at 6:00 in the morning I work up a sweat. And the ozone levels are off the charts to boot. I'm looking forward to winter.

My son started bike commuting to his babysitter this week and now that his trail-a-bike is back on the road, he'll be doing the first 2 weeks of Kindergarten on the bike with me.

Our commute is 14km and there were a few bikes in the racks today as the morning was rather nice... went by the school where my nieces go to school and there are tons of bike racks and sometimes there are just two little Raleighs parked there.

They live quite close to their school so have even ridden to school in the dead of winter... they are pretty hard core when it comes to cycling.