Summary
School districts across the U.S. are reducing bus services due to driver shortages and shifting transportation responsibilities to families, disproportionately affecting low-income households.
In Chicago, where only 17,000 of 325,000 students are eligible for buses, parents are turning to alternatives like ride-hailing apps.
Startups such as Piggyback Network and HopSkipDrive provide school transportation by connecting parents or contracting directly with districts, offering safety measures like real-time tracking and driver vetting.
Critics warn these solutions don’t fully address systemic inequities, as many families still struggle to afford or access reliable school transportation.
Or they could just bike to school like normal kids.
Oh just bike to school yeah that’s easy. Because this is a country that’s so very bikable.
Then fix that.
And in the mean time?
In the meantime children need to die for their utopia get with the program
Well its not going to become safe to walk or bike if everyone abandons the idea entirely. Demand creates solutions.
Walk?
The public school my daughter would have to walk or bike to in your scenario would be down rural roads with no sidewalks before sunrise, roads people shoot down at 30 miles above the speed limit, and across a four-lane highway with no traffic lights.
But it’s nice to know that you’re willing to sacrifice other people’s children for not being “normal kids.”
(It’s always fascinating to me that some people think everyone lives in a city.)
I grew up in a rural area. I had to cycle to high school every day for 5 years. Regardless of weather. 12 kilometers each way. Not just me, everyone in my school and pretty much every other school in the country. Plenty of kids who had to cycle much farther than me as well.
I just looked it up. It would have been a 10-mile (16 kilometer) ride for me, starting at 7 am each morning. I just checked the route in Google maps and there is still no shoulder, street lights, or sidewalk for any of it.
Mind, students weren’t allowed to have backpacks on account of school shooting fears. So, carrying supplies home would also have been an issue.
Edit: I checked the state highway records. Every single road I’d have to bike down has a 55mph speed limit.
Plenty of kids in my high school class who rode 18-20 kilometers each way. We may not have any mountains but we have shitloads of rain and wind (the downside of a flat country is the wind has free reign).
Like any Dutch mom would say: “you aren’t made of sugar” (sugar melts when it gets wet).
No backpacks allowed here either. Books were leased from the school and backpacks were considered to not protect the school’s property enough. You had to use one of these. Thick leather books bags, that weighed a ton empty. They were actually so heavy that it was causing health problems (back issues) and they had to introduce a rule that the bag cannot weigh more than 10% of a student’s body weight. You’d bring this to school every day on the cargo rack of your bike
No school shootings though, because we have proper gun regulation.
How many traffic light-free four-lane highways did you have to cross? More or less than zero? How often did cars zip by you in the darkness going 150% the speed limit?
Because you ignored those things that I brought up and talked about distance, which I didn’t mention.
First you’re talking about living in a rural area, then you’re talking about 4 lane highways. Which one is it?
I do that currently do that but I doubt most kids would. Its pretty dangerous because of the bad infastructure.