About driving kids to school

[Rowanapp]

So I walk the kids to school, and then cycle to work. Now secondary schools are back the traffic is awful again. I hate the fumes and worry about my kids developing lungs and brains being exposed to them. Why is the traffic so bad? Key workers presumably have always been driving to work. Everyone else still WFH. I always thought parents needed to drive due to needing to go on to work but that can’t be the case it must be parents driving children to school. I live 1.1 miles from school and up quite a big hill but mine have walked from starting at 4, or scooted (but I worry about scooter because of the traffic and now are good on bikes but I can’t cycle on the road with them because of the traffic)
Why can’t these children walk? I get some rural kids can’t but in a densely populated city why not just send your kids to a school within a few miles and let them walk. It’s good for their mental health and learning and physical inactivity is a far bigger killer than covid. Obviously some children have disabilities and specific challenges but honestly when did we become like this that most kids are thought incapable of walking a couple of miles a day.

I live opposite a primary school and the amount of parents driving their kids to school (in a town where you can walk across it in any direction from either end in 30 minutes or less) is staggering. The parking is also so inconsiderate and hardly any turn their engines off when stationary.

Completely agree with you OP!

You know what drives me mad? Cyclists clogging up the road at 12 miles an hour while a bus full of 20 people has to drag behind them for miles.

Why can't cyclists take public transport?

It's down to work commitments, choice and what fits in with real life.
As to scooters grrr...

I sympathise. I live close to a primary and a secondary and the traffic on our street at the end of the school day is a nightmare. DD is still at nursery, which is about 500m from our house, and goes to and fro on her scooter every day, which works fine. When she starts school, she'll walk there as well but it will be closer than the nursery.

I see a lot of kids walking to school, though, and some of them clearly cover some distance to do so. It might be that you have families traveling from further away than you expect. And there may be more parents than you imagine who have work to go to: in addition to key workers, you may have others who cannot work from home for whatever reason (or who are choosing to return to an office because they prefer that to WFH).

Don't have a good answer to this problem, though.

I live within 2 miles of my sons school but there are no footpaths to walk on, and I have to drop my other child at nursery which is another 2 miles in the opposite direction, and then start work. I would love to walk, but not possible!

Live 45min walk away (without children). Nearest school I could get the children into.

45 minutes walk isn't too bad... But there and back is 90mins plus waiting time. Twice a day. Four hours on the school run a day isn't feasible even for SAHP.

Also if you have to drop your children at 8.45 then the zoom calls at home start at 9, you can't walk them for 35 minutes, you might have to drive for 10. Our school isn't doing breakfast club right now as it crosses the bubbled.

bubbles *

@FightingTheFoo

You know what drives me mad? Cyclists clogging up the road at 12 miles an hour while a bus full of 20 people has to drag behind them for miles.

Why can't cyclists take public transport?

1. Because they don't want to take public transport as it's a combo of inconvenient, expensive, chaotic, smelly and noisy
2. Because they want the exercise
3. Most buses in built up areas go very slowly anyway because they need to stop often
4. If you're arguing for taking space away from cars to make segregated bike lanes, I'm with you

Not everyone is wfh though?

I drive my daughter to secondary. It makes sense as I work near her school so

• I'm not making an unnecessary journey
• she gets to leave 20mins later than if she got the bus
• there are no issues about buses being late/breaking down/her waiting in the rain
• I lift share with a friend so only one car on the road not two
• it saves each family £30 per month for only a small cost in petrol
• less risk of covid

@FightingTheFoo look at the image and see who is wasting road space, it's not cyclists. I'm sure most bus drivers would be happy to see all drivers jump on bikes, the roads would be empty.

Winds me right up as well. My fiancé and l never got driven to school. My parents would have openly laughed if l had demanded a lift to school and told up that what our legs were for . I guess answers for the obesity epidemic aren’t far away

Who cares
It works for them, fits their needs and lifestyle

There are a fair few near me who drive their kids to school, its walking distance, drives me nuts, (scuse pun)

Google maps tells me I'm a 2 hour 30 min walk from the DC's school. Each way. So, I drive. I was trying to get a school bus organised to our area last year before lockdown, when we are back to normal I will try again. There is a service called Zeelo that runs school buses with an app so it's like uber for a school bus, but you have to convince the school to do it for safeguarding and ours has been too distracted by covid stuff to think about school buses unfortunately.

I live a mile from my children’s school and my oldest has autism so this journey takes double the time it should as she needs frequent stops (every few minutes) it makes our journey super long and takes ages to get there as I need to constantly prompt her to walk, I hate doing it every day in the pouring rain as well some days, if I had a car (sadly I don’t) I would absolutely drive instead. Pre Covid we use to get the bus.

I try to walk or cycle kids to school but actually this year it's harder as getting home takes longer than getting to work so some days, when I have meetings at 9 or 3:30 (no after school club here yet) I have to drive to be able to make them.

Many people are working out of the house now. I wouldn't be able to cycle to work, it's too far and even if I could cycle, I couldn't carry everything I need and would arrive looking a right mess needing a shower. I don't expect I'm unusual.

I think less children are using buses at the moment due to Covid so that could be another reason why more children are arriving by car.

It’s 90 min walk to my kids school so we drive. They have walked and cycled but the roads are too busy I think. Always walked to primary 20 mins away tho. People are lazy

Because not everyone is still WFH. Some employers entertained it while the schools were off but not now.
Because they still need to start work, regardless of them having no commute and it takes too long to walk back.
Because they changed their hours to start earlier now they aren’t commuting and haven’t got time to walk back.
Because they don’t want to use public transport while there is a pandemic happening.

Because they have other children at different settings to also drop off

@xiaoxing do you live in the UK? I thought LAs had a responsibility to provide transport for school if the children live more than a certain distance away.

We live 5 miles from.our nearest secondary schools, and many people live further. There are no safe walking routes as the roads are NSL until they go through villages. No pavements. But there are school buses.

Because working from home still means being at your desk at 8:30 for many people. So time is of essence

Because not everyone has 40 minutes to spare. Even if you are wfh you might need to be logged in at 9am, if you drop off window is 8.50 and it's a 20 minute walk each way it doesn't work.

I used to drop mine on the way to work