There is apparently a phenomenon in the US now, where parents drive to the school individually to pick up and drop off their children at the beginning and end of the day. Some people I work with even take time off from working to do this. When the parents descend on the school each day there’s insane traffic, cars lined up for miles, all idling their engines. What happened to school buses?
People hate taxes, Americans hate community. We have the same thing here in the UK but only for primary schools from my memory.
It is so miserable and effectively shuts down a major street. People will tolerate the dumbest things just because it is the status quo.
I grew up with this culture, unfortunately, never rode a school bus or saw one.
And yea, it is complete trash. Let’s put tiny vulnerable road-unintelligent children, all running around, in the same place as a bunch of stressed out parents driving cars while mostly thinking about work or not being late for work.
What could go wrong!
Shit … let’s reduce the speed limit drastically to prevent accidents! Ok, now it’s just a big fat traffic Jam! Shit … let’s build specialised roads within the school to increase the speed of drop off. Ok … now we’ve lost some of our school grounds and it’s marginally better … except everyone’s driving tanks/four-wheel-drives now so it’s pretty dangerous for kids still! Shit lets …
Seen all of that. It’s really really dumb and stressful for kids and parents alike.
My son’s school charges $630 per year to ride the bus. And that is a public school. I still pay for it though, because, 1. I’m not going to spend my time sitting in a line cars every day. Not to mention take time off from work to do it. 2. I want him to experience life. It’s a great place for socialization
When I was in school, the bus route did not stop near my house, and it was too far to walk, and there was no good bike route (though one exists now). In middle and high school I would often walk or bike to a friend’s house after school but that wasn’t always an option.
This is a situation forced on us by car-centric city planning