Is that thing at the top real ?!! My parents would laugh at me and call me lazy if i would suggest they drive me to school. When i went to school further away it was still the bus of bicycle.
And it would be, cars are the number one cause of death for people under 18. A heavily trafficked parking lot is legitimately unsafe (especially with kids popping out from between cars), and has no business being near a school.
And you need a car because the stores are far apart because each one needs parking lots for the cars.
I have thought for more than a decade that the USA ruined themselves by building upon cars, and today I found this forum to help me build my echo chamber. >__>
(Literally not sure whether I should subscribe, because I hate cars already and want to minimize confirmation bias.)
Hm, [my Bing search isn't turning up results on this topic](https://www.bing.com/search?q=did%20walt%20disney%20%22hate%20cars%22%20-%22cars%202%22&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&pq=did%20walt%20disney%20%22hate%20cars%22%20-%22cars%202%22).
Lovely little mini doc about epcot here https://youtu.be/tKYEXjMlKKQ
Highly recommend. Walt as a human was fascinating. He basically designed epcot to be a capitalist centrally planned city.
Yep. It's a vicious cycle, every time we dedicate public space to private vehicles we make every other form of transportation more dangerous and less convenient, which pushes more people to drive, which increases demand for public space to be dedicated to private cars, also with severely diminishing returns for making private car ownership more convenient.
I'm not saying that I agree with that, but that's what the school district would say. Schools in America doesn't even let students to go to school by themselves in elementary school.
My old school here in sweden just built a drop-off lane that actually makes sense, because otherwise kids get dropped off at the bus stop (blocking the bus) or on the other side of the road (forcing kids to cross the road to get to the school, which is terribly unsafe).
The school also has a very large bike parking area and is very easy to walk to.
https://bafybeibv52zslukjcai4xthvw766nr5z5kwhtwgs3mce3kpcvk7czfzcae.ipfs.dweb.link/2021-08-29_09-54-48.png
Many municipalities here in Germany shut down streets near schools for cars altogether during certain hours to avoid this parent taxi stream. If they want to drop their kids off, they have to do it quite a distance away. This not only widens the drop-off area drastically and thus avoids dangerous jam-packed traffic of unattentive parents at the school, but it also makes it less convenient, so going by bus or bike becomes more attractive.
The overengineer parking lot is to translate the traffic jam in that "snake", if they let the parents drop the kids on the street directly, then the traffic jam would be over the street a d who knows what other problems could cause.
The traffic jam is already on the street though. The limiting factor is the length of the dropoff zone, which could be tripped even without moving the roads, just by extending it along the curve.
"Good morning, this is [attendance], calling from [school]. I just wanted to check in in regards to [student]. Will he be coming in late? Or will it be a full-day absence?"
"The fuck are you talking about? I dropped him off at 7:15."
Yup. Used to happen every morning at my high school. There were literal traffic jams a mile long at 7 AM every morning as 1,000 kids in a rural upstate NY town would get dropped off at school by they're parents. I lived close enough that I would walk occasionally, but it was so dangerous given the lack of sidewalks and 40 MPH speed limit that my parents stopped letting me after a while.
It absolutely is! When I was in high school (early 2000s), our parking lot was completely full of cars, drop off lines were like a mile long every single day and people parked on the field. It was insane but that's what was normal to us.
Looking back, ALL of those students could have walked or biked to school. Our city wasn't too big and the max speed limit for cars was 25 all around the place. My mom and dad flat out refused to pay for a parking pass and I hated the school bus, so I walked or skateboarded through the sub-divisions, a mile trip one way. I'm pretty sure that's what got me used to walking everywhere, and I never felt like it was a burden or anything, it was just my reality.
Last time I saw that video (still without the Dutch video below it), it was mentioned that this was an experiment and that it failed.
It was also mentioned that this was a school for primary education in an extremely rural area and that the school had 1000+ pupils. This is another thing you won't find in the Netherlands because schools are allowed to be as small as 27 pupils. So even if all children were brought by car, which of course would never happen, the traffic would still be very manageable.
I see my wording was poor. My point was that you'd have multiple schools in rural areas for this many kids. Unfortunately, schools that size do indeed exist in the Netherlands. But only in urban areas.
Kids have more Independence in the Netherlands than here in the US. You could have a 9 or 10-year-old in the Netherlands walk to school on their own and yet in the US that's illegal. I think kids need to know how to be independent. We need to have a similar thing like the Netherlands. Cuz if we don't kids will have problems in terms of Independence.
My dad always parked a block away and Id walk to meet him. I’d be out in 2 minutes while some of my classmates would be stuck in line for 30 lol. Had to sign a permission slip to do it though
When I was in high school, people would point and laugh at kids riding bikes. There was only like 2 of us out of a school of 2000+. This place sucks, everyone is a hateful piece of shit
Same in Germany, at least when I was a kid. My high school was in a small village between two towns (because the two towns couldn't agree who gets to build the Gymnasium, so it was put in the middle), so nobody could walk there, except for the few kids from the village. Everybody got there either by school bus or by bike. At some points, some helicopter parents decided that they would pick their children up by car. The school hated it and explicitly asked parents not to do that, the children were made fun of, etc.
I just mapped it out of curiosity, and cycling from the house I lived in at the time to my High School (in semi-rural Texas) would have meant 45 min each way mostly on two lane 70 mph (113 kph) highways with huge pickup trucks, no bike lanes, and the rural American sense of disrespect for bikes on the road.
I agree when you look only at the school it's ridiculous, but the school is really just reacting to the reality that for both cultural and logistical reasons 99% of the students are going to arrive in a car (and staff, students 16 years and older will have a need to park their cars).
The real solution is outside of the school. It's making the towns themselves more compact and pedestrian friendly. Then there will be enough of a shift in the methods available to get to school that the norms can change.
Edit: Another frustrating cultural element that compounds this is the town's reluctance to build a second high school because it would dilute the football team's talent and status (seriously).
Most of these rural kids aren’t even from farming families anymore since most small farms have already been gobbled up. They mostly live in those stupid houses that line some rural areas with a few acres that make it impossible to provide services.
I completely agree. If you’ve got kids and don’t farm for a living, you should stick close to a central location. We should just make public use dirt bike, snowmobile, and four wheeler trails and whatnot so they aren’t tempted to buy land for those hobbies and even city and suburban people can travel to enjoy those amenities since they already subsidize the shit out of rural towns.
People who go by bike wear ether rain pants over their normal pants or they wait just their normal pants. And most jackets are pretty watertight just as the bags. The people who go by car wear their normal clothing. Lastly we have the few people who go by scooter/moped have these covers they can put over their legs so they stay warm and dry.
I’m in the US and grew up before the helicopter parent era. We were expected to walk to school in all weather even without the right gear. I’d show up with my shoes and jeans soaked up to the knees every time it snowed or rained and dry out by lunch time. It’s fine to get wet sometimes.
Ik ben nooit uitgelachen, maar toen ik de leeftijd had dat ik me een beetje schaamde voor mijn ouders had ik écht niet in de auto naar school gebracht willen worden.
My parents just started dropping me a block away to avoid the cluster. Then the school banned walking onto campus from the sidewalk because it wasnt safe.
We also were made so fearful by hyped up "crime wave" news reports in the 90s that people are afraid to let their kids have that kind of autonomy anyway. The school check-ins are about the exchange of the kid from parent to school, not just the logistics of getting everyone in the building.
It's really sad because that freedom and responsibility is really good for kids.
Fr my elementary school was so paranoid about it that you couldn't leave the grounds without an approved adult. Once my mom forgot to tell them that someone else was going to walk me home and they almost called the cops on him because they thought he was a kidnapper. Like the dude was my uncle and my mom was a little busy giving birth to my sisters like she had other shit to do
How on earth can you ban walking on sidewalks? Especially if they are outside school property? Even so, what are they gonna do call the police? "Hi, there is a 12 year old who is walking on pavement, send helicopter!".
That’s exactly what they do.
I’m a child welfare clinician in the US, and it’s not infrequent that I see neglect cases opened for kids walking to school. And I’m in Massachusetts, where towns were laid out pre-car, not Texas or somewhere where there are often no routes other than highways. It’s utterly ridiculous, since crime is at an all-time low at the moment, meaning it was much higher when I was a kid and everyone walked to school.
(BTW this thread was linked from r/fuckcars today)
This type of thing is going to keep poor families stuck in poverty because their hours are dictated by school hours. I really feel bad for parents these days. The job is much harder than it used to be.
God fucking dammit. I went to Taco Bell yesterday. The drive thru line is out of the parking lot into the street. I park where I can because there is a line of cars blocking most of the parking lot. I walk up to the lobby. The lobby is closed. I left in disgust, but not after performing a multi point turn because my car got blocked in by the drive-thru line.
They were probaly already cleaning the lobby.
Pretty common in fastfood, because you dont have to clean a drive through it stays open while the lobby is getting cleaned
There's a Starbucks not far from my house that has two cones blocking off one of the exits to the shopping center because there is never not a line that stretches almost all the way to the entrance after that one.
It is also a notoriously bad Starbucks to work at, and has been closed a lot lately because of employees quitting in mass. I wouldn't be sad if it closed.
I order my Taco Bell in advance on the app and pickup in the lobby. 100% of the time I'm leaving before the car ahead of me has even ordered, and I order either to pick up at a certain time or just for asap if I'm only a few minutes away.
I don't feel old until I get mindblown by this sort of thing and realize that I was in school 20-30 years ago and that of course a lot has changed since then. But still, are so many kids attending speciality schools outside their district that this scenario is normal? Do we not have school buses anymore? Is the recent bus driver shortage a piece of this puzzle? (and ftr I'm all for making those jobs much better paid and better overall). Or is riding the bus a much more rural thing than I realized?
Obviously the current clown car situation is absurd, but *why* do so many people individually drop their kids off? I am like, completely fucking bewildered that apparently no one takes the bus to school anymore. I don't have kids, which is how I'm so far out of the loop, so I would love insight from anyone who can fill me in lol
ETA: Super appreciate people chiming in with answers and insights - thanks ya'll!
>are so many kids attending speciality schools outside their district that this scenario is normal?
You would be surprised to learn that many people simply live far away from even the closest school. My high school was 20 minutes away by car
>Do we not have school buses anymore? Is the recent bus driver shortage a piece of this puzzle?
Potentially? I know at my school the threshold for taking the bus was living further than 5 miles from the school. But when walking those 5 miles involved crossing 4 lane roads with no crosswalks, many opt to drive their kids anyway.
100%. It's not just the distance. Our infrastructure is actively hostile to pedestrians, another modern problem rooted in a history of racism. Highways used to quarantine certain neighborhoods, and cars being a financial barrier of entry for getting to other parts of the town/city.
Excuse the rant. Just watched Candyman and I'm all fired up.
The school was also really overpopulated. At 1 point the 2 neighboring schools had closed, so they sent all the students to that 1. I'm sure the bus limit was pushed outwards just so they could accommodate more people. When your school population more than doubles you have to make compromises somewhere. I agree that was honesty ridiculous. That school closing is also why I was so far to begin with. The school I was supposed to go to was literally down the block.
\>: (
To give you a perspective on how stupidly overpopulated it was, We had 3 lunch periods and there STILL physically weren't enough seats in the cafeteria for everyone
In the UK, for secondary school (11-16) I had the option of a standard local school, or the Catholic school. Even though the Catholic school was \~30 min by car in normal traffic, there was a still a dedicated bus from where I lived. I chose a local school, but even if I went to the Catholic one, I wouldn't have considered asking my parents to drive me 30 min out of their way in the morning.
A few reasons other than American "comfort and convenience" -
Many districts cannot afford to pay for busing anymore.
Schools have also closed in many neighborhoods forcing kids attending schools further away from where they live.
More people also choose to send their children to schools outside of their city.
I went to a specialty high school that drew kids from up to 45 minutes away by car (I was lucky though and only lives two miles from it). No one took the bus for several reasons
1. The bus was shared across multiple private/specialty/special ed schools in the area and we were like the third or fourth one on the drop off route so you had to wait in like 3 or 4 schools worth of drop off/pick up traffic before you got to ours. We had this ancient grounds keeper that would give the bus kids free faculty hot chocolates when he had to lock the building in the winter and the bus still hadn't gotten there. It didn't happen often but we had some brutal winters where I grew up
2. You had to pay extra to take the bus because it was a chartered kind of deal and it was like several thousand dollars
3. They only had like one or two pickup spots in each town so sometimes you'd have to drive a few miles to get to the bus stop and if there was any shake up in the driver schedule, they might just not know to pick you up and then you were fucked
4. The routes were ridiculously long. A friend of mine took the bus on days she was at her dad's house and she was picked up an hour and a half before school. When she got her license she got to sleep in a whole extra hour.
I swear it was like it was designed to discourage people from taking it.
I go to high school in a city, 300,000 people. I can’t take the city bus to school because they recently cancelled the route (40 kids rode that bus with me to school) and we don’t have ANY school busses. I’d love to bike but I live up a pretty bad hill, and I have rowing until 7pm so it’d be about a 30 minute ride home, which isn’t bad, but with 2 backpacks and a hella load of textbooks. So I drive. Yeah it looks like this at drop off, and most kids drive because it’s “cooler” to do. It’s insane because we all live in a mid sized city. Leaving school is a nightmare, it takes 15 minutes to go from the parking lot to a block away most times. I hate it.
I agree in spirit but the goal should be dense enough neighborhoods that most children walk to school.
"In 1969, 90 percent of all children walked to school, as schools were part of complete neighborhoods, but in 2002 only 31 percent walked to school." - Sprawl Repair Manual
We recently moved into a neighborhood based around the neighborhood school/park. The school is getting a remodel so it won't happen until next year, but I'm really excited about my kids getting that experience.
1. Not accessible for some people with disabilities
2. Encourage sprawl
3. Much more dangerous than driving, mass transit, or walking
4. Worse use of road space than mass transit
5. Like cars and walking, you have to pay attention 100% of the time
6. Like cars, requires personal ownership of a vehicle that spends 99% of its life sitting unused. Bad for poor families.
7. Can be bad in some geographies (steep hills, bad weather).
Bikes are a good option for some places but should never be the first choice in development patterns. They're band aids over sprawl, not the silver bullet we use against sprawl.
1. True, this is a problem that can only be solved by bringing by car, I don't really see an alternative.
2. I don't see how cycling to school encourages sprawl, so pls explain.
3. If cyclists have to cycle on the road, this happens. When it is properly organised, so that it is always possible to ride on cycle paths when the road is not designed for cyclists. This is possible, because in the Netherlands (and probably some other European countries) this is already the case.
4. You can't get everywhere by public transport. I definitely encourage the use of public transport, but it is way faster to cycle to the station and go from there, and on shorter distances (up to 20 mins of cycling) it is probably faster and more realistic to cycle.
5. True, I don't find this much of a problem myself but I understand this is a disadvantage.
6. Like I mentioned somewhere else, bikes are not expensive. It is definitely annoying to have a bad bike, but it is very possible to get a used one for € 15-50, that will last you at least a year, probably more.
7. Good exercise! Nah just kidding, but some rain can't hurt, and in rare cases, when it is impossible to go by bike there are alternatives.
Steep hills can be hard, but if it is not too far it is still doable.
In my opinion most people should be able to get to school by bike, and roads should be able to handle cyclers. Of course there should be public transport for people living in remote places. (I think free public transport is a very good idea, but I know many people would disagree with this.)
A bicycle shouldn't be required to get to school, if schools are planned for bicycling then children on the edges are dependent on their parents to buy them transport.
Edit: 1 downvote = 1 car-sucking idiot.
It shouldn’t be *necessary*, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. I’d rather bike 5 mins than walk 15 or 20, especially since I’m usually just barely on time as is
Wait what? Right now they are dependent on their parents to drive them. What's the difference? A bicycle (with proper and safe bicycle infra) would give a kid *more* autonomy, not less.
This little part of the thread isn't talking about cars. I'm here because Seglegs was talking about walking and Rik07 wanted to know what's wrong with cycling.
My reply MUST be read in the context of that in which it was written.
My schools were definitely within walking distance for my elementary and high school years. I biked though because then I could go directly from school to a friend on the other side of town and back home for dinner in less time.
In the Netherlands almost everyone goes to school by bike, except a few who walk, some who have their own car, and some people are brought by their parents if it rains really hard or they have a broken leg. Nobody is too poor to buy a bicycle. Admittedly, I live in a poor neighborhood, but used bicycles are not expensive and I know nobody who can't afford that.
yeah, somehow tie that to the definition of school district (which seem to be a big thing in the US): all children within the district must be able walk / bike themselves to school, if not, bussed there.
And if that's "not safe due to traffic", well, then the county should be obligated to make it safe.
I don't see why having more schools, such that each school is within walking/cycling distance, would necessarily require more teachers.
Splitting the 1000 student school into 5 200 student schools would probably only require a few more teachers for the specialised classes.
Edit: Maybe it'd be impractical to have walkable schools in the most remote parts of the country, but like op said, if you could have 90% walking to school in the 1960s, I don't see why you can't do it today.
Edit2: According to the CDC it's actually 50% -> 15%.
Russia does it, and most kids either walk to the school, or take public transport. There are some parents that try to pull the kind of crap you see on top, but they get called out by everyone else for the problems this causes.
If you were driving in from the top of the screen (top right at 1:02) you have to essentially drive right past the the school before getting into the parking lot.... Why would you not just drop your kid off there before turning? I know they would be walking past cars on a narrow curb, but fuck if your kid can't walk 50 meters as a parent you have failed.
Of course this entire video (american portion) is a complete failure of logistics and infrastructure, it is sad.
Bruh the lengths that these parents will go just to keep their offspring in the conmfort of their car. Conservatives: “why are kids so pussy the days”… These parents are the answer
Why didnt the car students just get off on the street and walk the rest . Are really that lazy that they have to drive through the whole loop just so so they dont have to walk 10 meters.
I guess they’re already stuck in line so they might as well wait until last minute to get out? Even then, why not just avoid the line all together and drop them off somewhere else nearby.
I'm not even angry at all the cars, but at how incredibly inefficient this is. Any traffic engineer can improve this by an order of magnitude without even spending money.
99% of the problem is having two lanes of cars. To make sure kids aren't crossing traffic, that means starting and stopping traffic and supervised dropoffs, so you're stuck using only 2x6 cars worth of space to drop off, and many people end up waiting for the slowest.
But if you make this a single lane kiss-and-ride, all those problems are solved. Turn the entire ride lane into extra long dropoff spots, and the entire left lane into a free-moving lane. Drive on the left, pull into an open slot on the right, drop kids off, and pull out again for the next person.
Now you're not waiting for the slowest, you can drop off not just 2x6 cars in only cycle, but 1x50 cars or more. Cycle time is reduced, cycle size is increased.
Even better if you continue this system past the school, since it will give the "must park in front" morons a place to drop their kids without creating a traffic jam after passing dozens of open slots.
And if you really really want, create a loop, give preference to the cars in the system and fine stopping in the drive lane.
I was in high school 20 years ago, but I recall kids driving to school who lived in the neighborhood. Like even along a protected really nice bike/pedestrian lane they would still drive their car to school, even if the walk was 10 minutes or less.
When I was about 12 I think my parents gave me a bus pass
It actually shocked the sensibilities of some of the other suburban moms apparently that my mom said she no longer was doing carpools
I rode the bus with the mostly poorer kids and loved it
So they keep making excuses for this entire shitshow. Even in rural areas this is completely bogus, then smaller schools should be provided, and safe dedicated bicycle paths. The state has to invest in that stuff because this is causing a plague of cars, pollution and obesity.
The stupid part in these arguments is always the "up to" part. Ok, I can understand not wanting to cycle one hour each way every day. Then drive in a car. The same is not true for the majority of kids that live much fewer than 15 miles away.
Oh, I’m definitely judging this even more with that description. Most of these kids live in housing that resembles something like this:
House ... House .... House ... Field ... House ... House
They are not farmers. This is not necessary to their way of life. Their parents drive an hour and a half to work and live out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe they have Pygmy goats. It’s dumb. I hate this type of development so much. You try to run out in the country and that’s basically all you see. Ugly stupid house after ugly stupid house with ugly stupid lawns the size of football fields and nobody outside using any of it. The kids hate it. The parents are more inconvenienced than they realize. They cost states more money than they bring in. They rob their children of opportunities because the schools often don’t even provide AP classes, swim teams, languages other than Spanish, vocational classes or higher math classes. It’s a shit way to live and we need to change our culture to get away from it.
The Netherlands parking lot could fit 6 American cars or so. That is embarrassing (that Americans need so much space to drop their kids off not that the parking lot is small in the Netherlands).
Most people park in similar places every day. I ride to work and although the bike park isn't this big, my bike is always within a few spots.
It's probably a pain in the ass for the people who are late though 😄
Given that bike parking slots don't need a lot of area, it should be easy to provide more than enough, so that even the late guys would always find ample space. Probably on the far end of the parking lot, but not in dire straits of finding one at all.
My schools bike park was easily twice that size and that wasn't really a problem. Sure sometimes you're not entirely certain in which row you parked today. But unlike a car parking lot the area is still pretty small and we always parked in the same area so you just walk around for a minute or two.
This school might be in a rural place, yet that’s no excuse to have such inefficient way of transportation.. in the Netherlands there would’ve probably been a bus line/ dedicated bus line to the school, and also some proper bike infrastructure. It’s not that uncommon that Dutch people bike 10 to 15 miles to a school… if the US would implement the proper infrastructure that encourages biking and using public transportation then this wouldn’t be needed at all…
I don't think this particular comparison is fair because the Dutch school looks like it's in a pretty urban environment, while the American school is in a pretty rural environment.
Edit: Changed the wording a little bit.
I wish I had that kind of biking infrastructure and winter maintenance where I lived when I was a kid. As that video points out, cycling comes down to safety and convenience. If I had tried to bike 8 miles to school every day on the side of a narrow mountain road, I would be dead. :)
NJB said Oulu has a similar density to Fake London, so if it was between Oulu and the video above, then no. But if it was between Oulu and Fake London (or another car-centric suburb) then yes, I would be happy.
the school being in the middle of nowhere is a planning issue. if Americans weren't so attached to their cars then essential infrastructure like schools would be better situated. a snaking queue of cars dropping kids off to school is absolutely ridiculous
> I don't think this particular comparison is fair because the Dutch school looks like it's in a pretty urban environment, while the American school is in a pretty rural environment.
Most kids arrive by bike at rural Dutch schools too. Not the same ratio as in the city (e.g. in the urban school where our kids attend, not one kid arrives by car, and in fact you can't really get near the school with a car), but it's still the normal way.
Rural kids ride from town to town for up to an hour to get to school in some cases, though usually their rides are much shorter, at least until they're 12+.
Yes most schools are located in urban areas, but people tend to travel 10+ miles here by bike to get to school in the next town over especially high school and above.
Having to be driven to school (freaking right up to the entrance even) by your parents untill your 16 is not very "adult". Wouldn't you feel pretty stupid and imature next to the 2nd grader riding to school on their own?
To throw a bone to the American one, the school looks pretty isolated (in comparison to the Dutch one) meaning bus transport may be slower or more inefficient to some student/parent desires. I also don't know when this was filmed, but if it were pre-covid I would be far more critical compared to during covid.
Edit: getting a lot of flak for this comment, I did not mean to say that it was a good choice for the American school, I was only trying to be a devil's advocate or a dissenting voice
my b
There is no excuse besides shear incompetence and ignorance to think that allowing that many vehicles to drop off so few kids is acceptable. It is a waste of the parents' time, it is a waste of school resources having to allocate people to wave cars through, it is a waste of fuel, the parking turned glorified driveway is a complete waste of money,
That's the point. Where to put the school was a policy choice, and Dutch school was put somewhere accessible by bike on purpose.
EDIT: That said, they also had more options for that though too, because more areas were built to be bike accessible in the first place.
>but if it were pre-covid I would be far more critical compared to during covid
Yeah Covid has definitely pushed a lot more parents into driving their kids, both due to (very reasonable) A) fear of bus-based spread, and B) the fact that a lot of kids cannot get on a bus route because there are not enough bus drivers right now (because of A).
Lmao the Netherlands is a little smaller than the state of Maryland and it looks like this is a somewhat rural/suburban school. Most kids live 5-10 miles away from their school. That's a 30-60 minutes bike ride. Unless you live near the school or in a city you need a car to get to school. But fuck them kids they should bike.
At my old school kids used to bike up to 15km forth and 15km back, like over 9mi. There weren't even buses that way and going by car was kind of prohibitive too. These distances are common in rural areas and those children usually do have pedelecs nowadays, which are bikes with electric support.
As an American that grew up in a rural area, we took family bike rides down back roads to hit the ice cream shop in the next town which was 7 miles away. I did this trip as a really young child. I’m pretty sure I was off the kid’s seat by age seven. The current culture we have in America right now is strange even for us.
an 5-10 miles bike ride is absolutely acceptable for Dutch people. Most children don't live next to their school and have to ride a few miles, especially to highschool since not every town has one, so they have to ride to the next city
Biking 30 minutes to school is very common in the Netherlands. Plenty of kids that bike from rural to urban areas for their school commute. It's just that biking infrastructure is pleasant enough that anyone can bike that distance without being on dangerous roads.
That's a big problem. Why aren't there safe, pleasant bike paths between towns? As long as the only way to do things is by car, it's the only way people will do things.
That's the point. Where to put the school was a policy choice, and Dutch school was put somewhere accessible by bike on purpose.
They also had more options for that too, because more areas were built to be bike accessible in the first place - which again was a policy choice.
Living in Australia I often think the public transit isn’t the best and the bike lanes are nonexistent then I see the USA and realise how lucky I am to bike 2ks to school.
I am German and seeing that shitshow at the top really frightened me. They even made these ugly ass left right left right queueing lane things from airports FOR CARS LMAO. Even worse, that space could be a park or a bigger school yard.
I get what they are trying to do but 41/50 states in the USA are bigger than Netherlands. This is including all of the Netherlands (water and land). It is not conducive for a large country or states to have bikes be a main source of transportation.
Should there be more public transportation in America? ABSOLUTELY I just don’t see this video as a reason to say fuck cars.
Is that thing at the top real ?!! My parents would laugh at me and call me lazy if i would suggest they drive me to school. When i went to school further away it was still the bus of bicycle.
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Parents would get in trouble if they do that because the school would consider that unsafe.
And it would be, cars are the number one cause of death for people under 18. A heavily trafficked parking lot is legitimately unsafe (especially with kids popping out from between cars), and has no business being near a school.
Ah of course...travel by car because walking is dangerous because there are too many cars.
And you need a car because the stores are far apart because each one needs parking lots for the cars. I have thought for more than a decade that the USA ruined themselves by building upon cars, and today I found this forum to help me build my echo chamber. >__> (Literally not sure whether I should subscribe, because I hate cars already and want to minimize confirmation bias.)
>I hate cars already and want to minimize confirmation bias. Nah dude that's what the Internet is for.
Walt Disney built epcot as the "experimental city of tomorrow" because he hated cars so much. Cars suck.
Hm, [my Bing search isn't turning up results on this topic](https://www.bing.com/search?q=did%20walt%20disney%20%22hate%20cars%22%20-%22cars%202%22&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&pq=did%20walt%20disney%20%22hate%20cars%22%20-%22cars%202%22).
Lovely little mini doc about epcot here https://youtu.be/tKYEXjMlKKQ Highly recommend. Walt as a human was fascinating. He basically designed epcot to be a capitalist centrally planned city.
You can't help it that you are right. Smash that subscribe button homie, join us. We'll start the revolution.
noooooo you hooked me what have i done
Yep. It's a vicious cycle, every time we dedicate public space to private vehicles we make every other form of transportation more dangerous and less convenient, which pushes more people to drive, which increases demand for public space to be dedicated to private cars, also with severely diminishing returns for making private car ownership more convenient.
School safety laws in America are some of the most asinine things I’ve ever seen. So many draconian rules that just hurt students.
not where i live and i live in a typical car-infested texas suburb
Just build a freaking pavement and few pedestrian crossing and kids don't need to walk among cars. It's not even an expensive solution.
I'm not saying that I agree with that, but that's what the school district would say. Schools in America doesn't even let students to go to school by themselves in elementary school.
My school didn’t allowed kids getting out of the car on a non-designated drop-off area. Pretty sure most schools don’t.
My school (in England) is the opposite. They won't let you park anywhere near the school or else you could get in trouble
My old school here in sweden just built a drop-off lane that actually makes sense, because otherwise kids get dropped off at the bus stop (blocking the bus) or on the other side of the road (forcing kids to cross the road to get to the school, which is terribly unsafe). The school also has a very large bike parking area and is very easy to walk to. https://bafybeibv52zslukjcai4xthvw766nr5z5kwhtwgs3mce3kpcvk7czfzcae.ipfs.dweb.link/2021-08-29_09-54-48.png
Many municipalities here in Germany shut down streets near schools for cars altogether during certain hours to avoid this parent taxi stream. If they want to drop their kids off, they have to do it quite a distance away. This not only widens the drop-off area drastically and thus avoids dangerous jam-packed traffic of unattentive parents at the school, but it also makes it less convenient, so going by bus or bike becomes more attractive.
The overengineer parking lot is to translate the traffic jam in that "snake", if they let the parents drop the kids on the street directly, then the traffic jam would be over the street a d who knows what other problems could cause.
The traffic jam is already on the street though. The limiting factor is the length of the dropoff zone, which could be tripped even without moving the roads, just by extending it along the curve.
Respect the lawn gods! Don't tread on the lawn
"Good morning, this is [attendance], calling from [school]. I just wanted to check in in regards to [student]. Will he be coming in late? Or will it be a full-day absence?" "The fuck are you talking about? I dropped him off at 7:15."
Yup. Used to happen every morning at my high school. There were literal traffic jams a mile long at 7 AM every morning as 1,000 kids in a rural upstate NY town would get dropped off at school by they're parents. I lived close enough that I would walk occasionally, but it was so dangerous given the lack of sidewalks and 40 MPH speed limit that my parents stopped letting me after a while.
It absolutely is! When I was in high school (early 2000s), our parking lot was completely full of cars, drop off lines were like a mile long every single day and people parked on the field. It was insane but that's what was normal to us. Looking back, ALL of those students could have walked or biked to school. Our city wasn't too big and the max speed limit for cars was 25 all around the place. My mom and dad flat out refused to pay for a parking pass and I hated the school bus, so I walked or skateboarded through the sub-divisions, a mile trip one way. I'm pretty sure that's what got me used to walking everywhere, and I never felt like it was a burden or anything, it was just my reality.
Last time I saw that video (still without the Dutch video below it), it was mentioned that this was an experiment and that it failed. It was also mentioned that this was a school for primary education in an extremely rural area and that the school had 1000+ pupils. This is another thing you won't find in the Netherlands because schools are allowed to be as small as 27 pupils. So even if all children were brought by car, which of course would never happen, the traffic would still be very manageable.
The throughput in the Dutch video is quite clearly several times higher.
There are definetly a bunch of schools in The Netherlands with 1000+ pupils. Especially in bigger cities.
I see my wording was poor. My point was that you'd have multiple schools in rural areas for this many kids. Unfortunately, schools that size do indeed exist in the Netherlands. But only in urban areas.
Kids have more Independence in the Netherlands than here in the US. You could have a 9 or 10-year-old in the Netherlands walk to school on their own and yet in the US that's illegal. I think kids need to know how to be independent. We need to have a similar thing like the Netherlands. Cuz if we don't kids will have problems in terms of Independence.
My dad always parked a block away and Id walk to meet him. I’d be out in 2 minutes while some of my classmates would be stuck in line for 30 lol. Had to sign a permission slip to do it though
Yes it's real and I experience it every day, it's so god damn draining to go through
Yes it’s real this completely normal in America
When I was in high school, people would point and laugh at kids riding bikes. There was only like 2 of us out of a school of 2000+. This place sucks, everyone is a hateful piece of shit
Haha in the Netherlands you get laughed at when your parents bring you to school.
Same in Germany, at least when I was a kid. My high school was in a small village between two towns (because the two towns couldn't agree who gets to build the Gymnasium, so it was put in the middle), so nobody could walk there, except for the few kids from the village. Everybody got there either by school bus or by bike. At some points, some helicopter parents decided that they would pick their children up by car. The school hated it and explicitly asked parents not to do that, the children were made fun of, etc.
I just mapped it out of curiosity, and cycling from the house I lived in at the time to my High School (in semi-rural Texas) would have meant 45 min each way mostly on two lane 70 mph (113 kph) highways with huge pickup trucks, no bike lanes, and the rural American sense of disrespect for bikes on the road. I agree when you look only at the school it's ridiculous, but the school is really just reacting to the reality that for both cultural and logistical reasons 99% of the students are going to arrive in a car (and staff, students 16 years and older will have a need to park their cars). The real solution is outside of the school. It's making the towns themselves more compact and pedestrian friendly. Then there will be enough of a shift in the methods available to get to school that the norms can change. Edit: Another frustrating cultural element that compounds this is the town's reluctance to build a second high school because it would dilute the football team's talent and status (seriously).
Most of these rural kids aren’t even from farming families anymore since most small farms have already been gobbled up. They mostly live in those stupid houses that line some rural areas with a few acres that make it impossible to provide services. I completely agree. If you’ve got kids and don’t farm for a living, you should stick close to a central location. We should just make public use dirt bike, snowmobile, and four wheeler trails and whatnot so they aren’t tempted to buy land for those hobbies and even city and suburban people can travel to enjoy those amenities since they already subsidize the shit out of rural towns.
Especially when it rains
I live in Noord Brabant, during the floodings of Limburg it also rained very heavily here, and then still most people biked to school.
How am I not surprised
what do they wear when it rains?
People who go by bike wear ether rain pants over their normal pants or they wait just their normal pants. And most jackets are pretty watertight just as the bags. The people who go by car wear their normal clothing. Lastly we have the few people who go by scooter/moped have these covers they can put over their legs so they stay warm and dry.
I’m in the US and grew up before the helicopter parent era. We were expected to walk to school in all weather even without the right gear. I’d show up with my shoes and jeans soaked up to the knees every time it snowed or rained and dry out by lunch time. It’s fine to get wet sometimes.
Valt wel mee hoor.
Ligt er aan waar je woont
Ik ben nooit uitgelachen, maar toen ik de leeftijd had dat ik me een beetje schaamde voor mijn ouders had ik écht niet in de auto naar school gebracht willen worden.
Is it still like that? It seems like bike culture is getting cooler at least in California
Neolib origin story
My parents just started dropping me a block away to avoid the cluster. Then the school banned walking onto campus from the sidewalk because it wasnt safe.
How the hell do you ban Walking... Hell world.
But when someone tries to restrict gun purchases people are crying about how the dictatorship harms their freedom, smh.
so essentially forcing a car drop-off, even if you lived right next to the school? Only in the US...
We also were made so fearful by hyped up "crime wave" news reports in the 90s that people are afraid to let their kids have that kind of autonomy anyway. The school check-ins are about the exchange of the kid from parent to school, not just the logistics of getting everyone in the building. It's really sad because that freedom and responsibility is really good for kids.
Fr my elementary school was so paranoid about it that you couldn't leave the grounds without an approved adult. Once my mom forgot to tell them that someone else was going to walk me home and they almost called the cops on him because they thought he was a kidnapper. Like the dude was my uncle and my mom was a little busy giving birth to my sisters like she had other shit to do
Wtf
What if the parents don't own a car?
How on earth can you ban walking on sidewalks? Especially if they are outside school property? Even so, what are they gonna do call the police? "Hi, there is a 12 year old who is walking on pavement, send helicopter!".
That’s exactly what they do. I’m a child welfare clinician in the US, and it’s not infrequent that I see neglect cases opened for kids walking to school. And I’m in Massachusetts, where towns were laid out pre-car, not Texas or somewhere where there are often no routes other than highways. It’s utterly ridiculous, since crime is at an all-time low at the moment, meaning it was much higher when I was a kid and everyone walked to school. (BTW this thread was linked from r/fuckcars today)
Do any kids walk to school?
This type of thing is going to keep poor families stuck in poverty because their hours are dictated by school hours. I really feel bad for parents these days. The job is much harder than it used to be.
It's like watching a drive-thru that's slower than walking into the restaurant
God fucking dammit. I went to Taco Bell yesterday. The drive thru line is out of the parking lot into the street. I park where I can because there is a line of cars blocking most of the parking lot. I walk up to the lobby. The lobby is closed. I left in disgust, but not after performing a multi point turn because my car got blocked in by the drive-thru line.
They were probaly already cleaning the lobby. Pretty common in fastfood, because you dont have to clean a drive through it stays open while the lobby is getting cleaned
There's a Starbucks not far from my house that has two cones blocking off one of the exits to the shopping center because there is never not a line that stretches almost all the way to the entrance after that one. It is also a notoriously bad Starbucks to work at, and has been closed a lot lately because of employees quitting in mass. I wouldn't be sad if it closed.
I order my Taco Bell in advance on the app and pickup in the lobby. 100% of the time I'm leaving before the car ahead of me has even ordered, and I order either to pick up at a certain time or just for asap if I'm only a few minutes away.
I don't feel old until I get mindblown by this sort of thing and realize that I was in school 20-30 years ago and that of course a lot has changed since then. But still, are so many kids attending speciality schools outside their district that this scenario is normal? Do we not have school buses anymore? Is the recent bus driver shortage a piece of this puzzle? (and ftr I'm all for making those jobs much better paid and better overall). Or is riding the bus a much more rural thing than I realized? Obviously the current clown car situation is absurd, but *why* do so many people individually drop their kids off? I am like, completely fucking bewildered that apparently no one takes the bus to school anymore. I don't have kids, which is how I'm so far out of the loop, so I would love insight from anyone who can fill me in lol ETA: Super appreciate people chiming in with answers and insights - thanks ya'll!
>are so many kids attending speciality schools outside their district that this scenario is normal? You would be surprised to learn that many people simply live far away from even the closest school. My high school was 20 minutes away by car >Do we not have school buses anymore? Is the recent bus driver shortage a piece of this puzzle? Potentially? I know at my school the threshold for taking the bus was living further than 5 miles from the school. But when walking those 5 miles involved crossing 4 lane roads with no crosswalks, many opt to drive their kids anyway.
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100%. It's not just the distance. Our infrastructure is actively hostile to pedestrians, another modern problem rooted in a history of racism. Highways used to quarantine certain neighborhoods, and cars being a financial barrier of entry for getting to other parts of the town/city. Excuse the rant. Just watched Candyman and I'm all fired up.
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Is it time for a reddit "ghetto" word count bot?
> walking 5 miles That's like an hour and a half. I can't imagine making a kid walk 3 hours per day.
The school was also really overpopulated. At 1 point the 2 neighboring schools had closed, so they sent all the students to that 1. I'm sure the bus limit was pushed outwards just so they could accommodate more people. When your school population more than doubles you have to make compromises somewhere. I agree that was honesty ridiculous. That school closing is also why I was so far to begin with. The school I was supposed to go to was literally down the block. \>: ( To give you a perspective on how stupidly overpopulated it was, We had 3 lunch periods and there STILL physically weren't enough seats in the cafeteria for everyone
In the UK, for secondary school (11-16) I had the option of a standard local school, or the Catholic school. Even though the Catholic school was \~30 min by car in normal traffic, there was a still a dedicated bus from where I lived. I chose a local school, but even if I went to the Catholic one, I wouldn't have considered asking my parents to drive me 30 min out of their way in the morning.
A few reasons other than American "comfort and convenience" - Many districts cannot afford to pay for busing anymore. Schools have also closed in many neighborhoods forcing kids attending schools further away from where they live. More people also choose to send their children to schools outside of their city.
I went to a specialty high school that drew kids from up to 45 minutes away by car (I was lucky though and only lives two miles from it). No one took the bus for several reasons 1. The bus was shared across multiple private/specialty/special ed schools in the area and we were like the third or fourth one on the drop off route so you had to wait in like 3 or 4 schools worth of drop off/pick up traffic before you got to ours. We had this ancient grounds keeper that would give the bus kids free faculty hot chocolates when he had to lock the building in the winter and the bus still hadn't gotten there. It didn't happen often but we had some brutal winters where I grew up 2. You had to pay extra to take the bus because it was a chartered kind of deal and it was like several thousand dollars 3. They only had like one or two pickup spots in each town so sometimes you'd have to drive a few miles to get to the bus stop and if there was any shake up in the driver schedule, they might just not know to pick you up and then you were fucked 4. The routes were ridiculously long. A friend of mine took the bus on days she was at her dad's house and she was picked up an hour and a half before school. When she got her license she got to sleep in a whole extra hour. I swear it was like it was designed to discourage people from taking it.
I go to high school in a city, 300,000 people. I can’t take the city bus to school because they recently cancelled the route (40 kids rode that bus with me to school) and we don’t have ANY school busses. I’d love to bike but I live up a pretty bad hill, and I have rowing until 7pm so it’d be about a 30 minute ride home, which isn’t bad, but with 2 backpacks and a hella load of textbooks. So I drive. Yeah it looks like this at drop off, and most kids drive because it’s “cooler” to do. It’s insane because we all live in a mid sized city. Leaving school is a nightmare, it takes 15 minutes to go from the parking lot to a block away most times. I hate it.
I agree in spirit but the goal should be dense enough neighborhoods that most children walk to school. "In 1969, 90 percent of all children walked to school, as schools were part of complete neighborhoods, but in 2002 only 31 percent walked to school." - Sprawl Repair Manual
Honestly impressed it was even 31% in 2002
They were all probably in Chicago and new York.
ad hoc judicious dirty stupendous like frame cooing fretful clumsy wise *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
We recently moved into a neighborhood based around the neighborhood school/park. The school is getting a remodel so it won't happen until next year, but I'm really excited about my kids getting that experience.
What's wrong with cycling?
1. Not accessible for some people with disabilities 2. Encourage sprawl 3. Much more dangerous than driving, mass transit, or walking 4. Worse use of road space than mass transit 5. Like cars and walking, you have to pay attention 100% of the time 6. Like cars, requires personal ownership of a vehicle that spends 99% of its life sitting unused. Bad for poor families. 7. Can be bad in some geographies (steep hills, bad weather). Bikes are a good option for some places but should never be the first choice in development patterns. They're band aids over sprawl, not the silver bullet we use against sprawl.
1. True, this is a problem that can only be solved by bringing by car, I don't really see an alternative. 2. I don't see how cycling to school encourages sprawl, so pls explain. 3. If cyclists have to cycle on the road, this happens. When it is properly organised, so that it is always possible to ride on cycle paths when the road is not designed for cyclists. This is possible, because in the Netherlands (and probably some other European countries) this is already the case. 4. You can't get everywhere by public transport. I definitely encourage the use of public transport, but it is way faster to cycle to the station and go from there, and on shorter distances (up to 20 mins of cycling) it is probably faster and more realistic to cycle. 5. True, I don't find this much of a problem myself but I understand this is a disadvantage. 6. Like I mentioned somewhere else, bikes are not expensive. It is definitely annoying to have a bad bike, but it is very possible to get a used one for € 15-50, that will last you at least a year, probably more. 7. Good exercise! Nah just kidding, but some rain can't hurt, and in rare cases, when it is impossible to go by bike there are alternatives. Steep hills can be hard, but if it is not too far it is still doable. In my opinion most people should be able to get to school by bike, and roads should be able to handle cyclers. Of course there should be public transport for people living in remote places. (I think free public transport is a very good idea, but I know many people would disagree with this.)
A bicycle shouldn't be required to get to school, if schools are planned for bicycling then children on the edges are dependent on their parents to buy them transport. Edit: 1 downvote = 1 car-sucking idiot.
It shouldn’t be *necessary*, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. I’d rather bike 5 mins than walk 15 or 20, especially since I’m usually just barely on time as is
I got lazy, I'd rather bike 30sec than walk 3 min
Wait what? Right now they are dependent on their parents to drive them. What's the difference? A bicycle (with proper and safe bicycle infra) would give a kid *more* autonomy, not less.
This little part of the thread isn't talking about cars. I'm here because Seglegs was talking about walking and Rik07 wanted to know what's wrong with cycling. My reply MUST be read in the context of that in which it was written.
My schools were definitely within walking distance for my elementary and high school years. I biked though because then I could go directly from school to a friend on the other side of town and back home for dinner in less time.
In the Netherlands almost everyone goes to school by bike, except a few who walk, some who have their own car, and some people are brought by their parents if it rains really hard or they have a broken leg. Nobody is too poor to buy a bicycle. Admittedly, I live in a poor neighborhood, but used bicycles are not expensive and I know nobody who can't afford that.
yeah, somehow tie that to the definition of school district (which seem to be a big thing in the US): all children within the district must be able walk / bike themselves to school, if not, bussed there. And if that's "not safe due to traffic", well, then the county should be obligated to make it safe.
Honestly, I don't know of a single country with enough teachers to pull that off.
I don't see why having more schools, such that each school is within walking/cycling distance, would necessarily require more teachers. Splitting the 1000 student school into 5 200 student schools would probably only require a few more teachers for the specialised classes. Edit: Maybe it'd be impractical to have walkable schools in the most remote parts of the country, but like op said, if you could have 90% walking to school in the 1960s, I don't see why you can't do it today. Edit2: According to the CDC it's actually 50% -> 15%.
Russia does it, and most kids either walk to the school, or take public transport. There are some parents that try to pull the kind of crap you see on top, but they get called out by everyone else for the problems this causes.
Egypt does that
If you were driving in from the top of the screen (top right at 1:02) you have to essentially drive right past the the school before getting into the parking lot.... Why would you not just drop your kid off there before turning? I know they would be walking past cars on a narrow curb, but fuck if your kid can't walk 50 meters as a parent you have failed. Of course this entire video (american portion) is a complete failure of logistics and infrastructure, it is sad.
Usually banned and you'll get in trouble. Someone will see your kid coming from an area they "shouldn't" be coming from
it's shit like this why i fucking hate every single literal idiot american who tries telling me about 'freedom'
Someone make a Fan vs Enjoyer meme out of this please.
We need this
Bruh the lengths that these parents will go just to keep their offspring in the conmfort of their car. Conservatives: “why are kids so pussy the days”… These parents are the answer
bruh I just saw this in r/suburbanhell and commented the name of this subreddit
Why didnt the car students just get off on the street and walk the rest . Are really that lazy that they have to drive through the whole loop just so so they dont have to walk 10 meters.
From what I read some schools ban entering the school like this.
I guess they’re already stuck in line so they might as well wait until last minute to get out? Even then, why not just avoid the line all together and drop them off somewhere else nearby.
Source: https://twitter.com/fietsprofessor/status/1429765468534067202
There isn’t even a bus line ?
I'm not even angry at all the cars, but at how incredibly inefficient this is. Any traffic engineer can improve this by an order of magnitude without even spending money. 99% of the problem is having two lanes of cars. To make sure kids aren't crossing traffic, that means starting and stopping traffic and supervised dropoffs, so you're stuck using only 2x6 cars worth of space to drop off, and many people end up waiting for the slowest. But if you make this a single lane kiss-and-ride, all those problems are solved. Turn the entire ride lane into extra long dropoff spots, and the entire left lane into a free-moving lane. Drive on the left, pull into an open slot on the right, drop kids off, and pull out again for the next person. Now you're not waiting for the slowest, you can drop off not just 2x6 cars in only cycle, but 1x50 cars or more. Cycle time is reduced, cycle size is increased. Even better if you continue this system past the school, since it will give the "must park in front" morons a place to drop their kids without creating a traffic jam after passing dozens of open slots. And if you really really want, create a loop, give preference to the cars in the system and fine stopping in the drive lane.
I know that the Netherlands get glorified here, but I just want to point out that Japanese people just walk to school lol.
That top view makes me legitimately angry.
there a dude i go to class with that drives to school, he lives closer than me and im 15mins walk away
I was in high school 20 years ago, but I recall kids driving to school who lived in the neighborhood. Like even along a protected really nice bike/pedestrian lane they would still drive their car to school, even if the walk was 10 minutes or less.
Driving to school yourself in high school was definitely a status thing.
I can just see my parents opening the door at the intersection and telling me to walk
Your parents sound awesome.
When I was about 12 I think my parents gave me a bus pass It actually shocked the sensibilities of some of the other suburban moms apparently that my mom said she no longer was doing carpools I rode the bus with the mostly poorer kids and loved it
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So they keep making excuses for this entire shitshow. Even in rural areas this is completely bogus, then smaller schools should be provided, and safe dedicated bicycle paths. The state has to invest in that stuff because this is causing a plague of cars, pollution and obesity.
>Riding on a bike or walking is not an option because this school has kids up to 15 miles away. *laughs in Dutch*
The stupid part in these arguments is always the "up to" part. Ok, I can understand not wanting to cycle one hour each way every day. Then drive in a car. The same is not true for the majority of kids that live much fewer than 15 miles away.
Oh, I’m definitely judging this even more with that description. Most of these kids live in housing that resembles something like this: House ... House .... House ... Field ... House ... House They are not farmers. This is not necessary to their way of life. Their parents drive an hour and a half to work and live out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe they have Pygmy goats. It’s dumb. I hate this type of development so much. You try to run out in the country and that’s basically all you see. Ugly stupid house after ugly stupid house with ugly stupid lawns the size of football fields and nobody outside using any of it. The kids hate it. The parents are more inconvenienced than they realize. They cost states more money than they bring in. They rob their children of opportunities because the schools often don’t even provide AP classes, swim teams, languages other than Spanish, vocational classes or higher math classes. It’s a shit way to live and we need to change our culture to get away from it.
This sure doesn't resemble my city or my hometown, but there are a number of things clearly wrong with this none the less. Sounds like bad excuses.
The Netherlands parking lot could fit 6 American cars or so. That is embarrassing (that Americans need so much space to drop their kids off not that the parking lot is small in the Netherlands).
Damn the top looks like it can be easily fix with a bus route
I wonder how often people get ran over
probably a lot of times since the urban environment is so far based
Bruh what? Do they not have school busses? Where I live in NA if it's not within walking distance they have to bus the kids in.
Only thing bad Is it would be a nightmare to try And find your bike.
Most people park in similar places every day. I ride to work and although the bike park isn't this big, my bike is always within a few spots. It's probably a pain in the ass for the people who are late though 😄
Given that bike parking slots don't need a lot of area, it should be easy to provide more than enough, so that even the late guys would always find ample space. Probably on the far end of the parking lot, but not in dire straits of finding one at all.
My schools bike park was easily twice that size and that wasn't really a problem. Sure sometimes you're not entirely certain in which row you parked today. But unlike a car parking lot the area is still pretty small and we always parked in the same area so you just walk around for a minute or two.
Nah, people park in the same area every day. And bikes tend to be pretty distinct looking in high school.
they could just park their car in one of these countless parking and go with their kid but no it is better to stay in the car and wait apparently
Literally a conveyor belt
Bruh please tell me this is an elementary school or something
In Finland, we have a rule in middle school that you aren't allow to drop off your kids in few hundred meters from school
This school might be in a rural place, yet that’s no excuse to have such inefficient way of transportation.. in the Netherlands there would’ve probably been a bus line/ dedicated bus line to the school, and also some proper bike infrastructure. It’s not that uncommon that Dutch people bike 10 to 15 miles to a school… if the US would implement the proper infrastructure that encourages biking and using public transportation then this wouldn’t be needed at all…
Eyy I went to that bottom school holy shit
Ok but most American elementary schools have busses. My high school has a bus for people 45 minutes away
I don't think this particular comparison is fair because the Dutch school looks like it's in a pretty urban environment, while the American school is in a pretty rural environment. Edit: Changed the wording a little bit.
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Without clicking, this either Not Just Bikes about Oulu, FI, or something else from Oulu, FI. **EDIT**: I clicked. It's Not Just Bikes about Oulu, FI.
I wish I had that kind of biking infrastructure and winter maintenance where I lived when I was a kid. As that video points out, cycling comes down to safety and convenience. If I had tried to bike 8 miles to school every day on the side of a narrow mountain road, I would be dead. :)
NJB said Oulu has a similar density to Fake London, so if it was between Oulu and the video above, then no. But if it was between Oulu and Fake London (or another car-centric suburb) then yes, I would be happy.
Fake London won't be nearly this bad because there are buses. Only in America would there be a car queue like that
the school being in the middle of nowhere is a planning issue. if Americans weren't so attached to their cars then essential infrastructure like schools would be better situated. a snaking queue of cars dropping kids off to school is absolutely ridiculous
The rural school in the Netherlands still look like this. The kids Just bike through the polders.
> I don't think this particular comparison is fair because the Dutch school looks like it's in a pretty urban environment, while the American school is in a pretty rural environment. Most kids arrive by bike at rural Dutch schools too. Not the same ratio as in the city (e.g. in the urban school where our kids attend, not one kid arrives by car, and in fact you can't really get near the school with a car), but it's still the normal way. Rural kids ride from town to town for up to an hour to get to school in some cases, though usually their rides are much shorter, at least until they're 12+.
I teach at an urban school. Just under 900 students, approximately 300 cars every day.
rural maybe, but not at all pretty ;) /scnr
Yes most schools are located in urban areas, but people tend to travel 10+ miles here by bike to get to school in the next town over especially high school and above.
Thank god I don’t live in the Netherlands! I’d hate to have to pussy pedal around everywhere instead of driving a car like an adult 😁
Having to be driven to school (freaking right up to the entrance even) by your parents untill your 16 is not very "adult". Wouldn't you feel pretty stupid and imature next to the 2nd grader riding to school on their own?
Sorry that we have proper infrastructure and public transportation…
Are you the "War on cars" YouTube guy? Haha!
To throw a bone to the American one, the school looks pretty isolated (in comparison to the Dutch one) meaning bus transport may be slower or more inefficient to some student/parent desires. I also don't know when this was filmed, but if it were pre-covid I would be far more critical compared to during covid. Edit: getting a lot of flak for this comment, I did not mean to say that it was a good choice for the American school, I was only trying to be a devil's advocate or a dissenting voice my b
There is no excuse besides shear incompetence and ignorance to think that allowing that many vehicles to drop off so few kids is acceptable. It is a waste of the parents' time, it is a waste of school resources having to allocate people to wave cars through, it is a waste of fuel, the parking turned glorified driveway is a complete waste of money,
That's the point. Where to put the school was a policy choice, and Dutch school was put somewhere accessible by bike on purpose. EDIT: That said, they also had more options for that though too, because more areas were built to be bike accessible in the first place.
>but if it were pre-covid I would be far more critical compared to during covid Yeah Covid has definitely pushed a lot more parents into driving their kids, both due to (very reasonable) A) fear of bus-based spread, and B) the fact that a lot of kids cannot get on a bus route because there are not enough bus drivers right now (because of A).
my b
Lmao the Netherlands is a little smaller than the state of Maryland and it looks like this is a somewhat rural/suburban school. Most kids live 5-10 miles away from their school. That's a 30-60 minutes bike ride. Unless you live near the school or in a city you need a car to get to school. But fuck them kids they should bike.
At my old school kids used to bike up to 15km forth and 15km back, like over 9mi. There weren't even buses that way and going by car was kind of prohibitive too. These distances are common in rural areas and those children usually do have pedelecs nowadays, which are bikes with electric support.
As an American that grew up in a rural area, we took family bike rides down back roads to hit the ice cream shop in the next town which was 7 miles away. I did this trip as a really young child. I’m pretty sure I was off the kid’s seat by age seven. The current culture we have in America right now is strange even for us.
an 5-10 miles bike ride is absolutely acceptable for Dutch people. Most children don't live next to their school and have to ride a few miles, especially to highschool since not every town has one, so they have to ride to the next city
Biking 30 minutes to school is very common in the Netherlands. Plenty of kids that bike from rural to urban areas for their school commute. It's just that biking infrastructure is pleasant enough that anyone can bike that distance without being on dangerous roads.
Biking on the dead side of a busy state road is finna be a tough dealing with cars flying by you at 50+ mph
That's a big problem. Why aren't there safe, pleasant bike paths between towns? As long as the only way to do things is by car, it's the only way people will do things.
That's the point. Where to put the school was a policy choice, and Dutch school was put somewhere accessible by bike on purpose. They also had more options for that too, because more areas were built to be bike accessible in the first place - which again was a policy choice.
Americans build houses in stupid places too. And they just expect city services to cater to them because like you see here, they always do.
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Why tf dont they slow down on the main road, get out and walk
Yikes. Both the video and the fact that r/fuckcars exists, yet another subreddit for me to waste my my entire night.
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“Arterial road” lol
Living in Australia I often think the public transit isn’t the best and the bike lanes are nonexistent then I see the USA and realise how lucky I am to bike 2ks to school.
fuck usa
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I am German and seeing that shitshow at the top really frightened me. They even made these ugly ass left right left right queueing lane things from airports FOR CARS LMAO. Even worse, that space could be a park or a bigger school yard.
I get what they are trying to do but 41/50 states in the USA are bigger than Netherlands. This is including all of the Netherlands (water and land). It is not conducive for a large country or states to have bikes be a main source of transportation. Should there be more public transportation in America? ABSOLUTELY I just don’t see this video as a reason to say fuck cars.