Originally Posted by
FenderTL5
My youngest is now a Senior in HS. The HS is about 6 miles from our house. He rides the school bus.
The middle school is just under 2 miles from our house.
When my daughter went there, she would sometimes walk home in the afternoon.
For a middle-schooler - here, it's much safer to walk than ride a bike. There are no bike lanes or sidewalks and the road between our house and the middle school is the worst stretch of road that I commute on for, let's call it; motorist-interaction.
Someone walking can stay away from the roadway in the grass areas along side, including a few yards.
Very few bike riders at either school, but based on the infrastructure, that's no surprise.
The car drop off lines are often ridiculous.
I think you and a couple others make good points about this ridiculous infrastructure being a problem for school kids.
When I was a grade school kid in the suburbs of the 1960s, I walked and rode my bike on some pretty big roads. Actually, I used the sidewalks, and a pretty big road was usually 2 or 3 lanes, with car speeds about 30 mph.
Those same roads are still there and they're still pretty big. Only nowadays, that means they have 5 or 6 lanes, and car speeds are 45 mph. And what did they take out in order to make room for wider roads? The sidewalks of course! God forbid they would reduce parking spaces to make room for a sidewalk.
As a fit adult, I would find it difficult to walk or ride along these suburban roads. There is no way a child could walk or ride a bike on the pretty busy roads that I used to roam freely on.