Knowing what goes on in school buses, I might prefer a city bus for my kids…
For what its worth, in London, its a right of passage for kids to start riding the underground solo to school when they turn 12…
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I really do love the idea of having kids use the city buses to get to and from school but realize it’ll have to be practically a generational change to get away from using a dedicated bus school system.
Every family can make their own decision (every kid is different) but seeing the fact that anyone under 18 can ride for free right now, a lot more people should at least consider it if a route is nearby. Plus, I remember missing the school bus a few times. Knowing the city bus system as a kid would have given me options and my family some flexibility.
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I just don’t think that many kids today are mentally equipped to navigate themselves to school each day, especially in an environment/culture of hyper protective parenting.
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I think kids are just as perfectly equipped for this as they ever have been. Of course you would have to teach them, but kids are so adaptable. Obviously I wouldn’t advocate sending a kindergartener to walk across a 45mph stroad to catch a bus but I am definitely not a believer in the “pfeh, kids these days are so weak” nonsense. That sort of rhetoric and those low expectations are precisely the problem.
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That’s a little more understandable. I thought we were talking about 7 year olds. 
I don’t trust the world today. And just to clarify, my issue wouldn’t be with kids not being capable; my issue would be trusting all the grown people whom they would come across during that time. Imagine a young child gets kidnapped and the police finds out the parents are sending them alone on a city bus. What do you think will happen to the parents?
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The mistrust of the World drives the behavior associated with parenting, which in turn shapes the children.
In Japan, very small children are capable of navigating their towns with the help of their community, because the communities themselves are trusted with the collective safety of their children. The idea of this is so foreign to children and parenting today that it would take a massive cultural shift to change it. As for children taking public buses, I don’t doubt that it’s possible and that it’s successful for some, but I just can’t see it being a widespread practice given our culture today.
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Kidd are very adaptable and would be used to in in a week or two. It’s the parents that would freak out about it.
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Having literally grown up in Mayberry USA and having tons of freedoms to walk/bike pretty much where ever I pleased, I appreciate the freedoms a small, sleepy town offered a kid in the 90s. However, as a parent of three kids under the age of 10 living in Raleigh, there is no way I would let my kids have the same “freedoms” I had. Just watching them, they run out into parking lots, run across the street without looking, even though they are told to stop and look DAILY. They are very focused on their own agenda and not paying attention to the world around them. How do you teach kids to pay attention to what is going on around them, to be aware of the environment/people?
We had a few sketchy folks back in Mount Airy, that I always steered clear of. I am not sure my kids would be able to make those same decisions as to who is OK to ask for help, vs who is the potential child molester/kidnapper. We live in a very messed up world, and as a parent, it is my job to protect and teach my kids how the world works.
My family lives in a highly walkable neighborhood (one of the main reasons for moving there), but it will still be a few years before I will let the kids go up to the stores solo. As for riding the bus without parents… it is going to be a long time for that to happen.
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I think that’s a key point. A lot depends on the area and the ridership. You can’t just indiscriminately know if you would let a kid ride public transportation without knowing the kid, the route, and the reputation of the system.
I think that eventually my son could ride a public bus, if the schedule and route worked out. Unfortunately, as it stands now he would be bussed from Raleigh to Cary, rather than to a school that’s less than 1/2 mile from my house.
You just proved my point. Having said that. The bus systems of today would not work. But something to strive for a system of the future.
Obviously the biggest hurdles are that the bus system does not go where it needs to for school kids, and currently it’s mostly poor or creepy people riding the bus.
Envision a city where you can get to almost anywhere in the city by bus or light rail, and that it’s a system that is used by all segments of the population. business people, lawyers, teenagers, families, doctors, blue collar workers etc. That would make it a lot more viable to send your kids on a bus, vs a bus just filled with creepy folks. Then even if there was a creepy person on the bus, there would be plenty of regular decent people on it as well that would look out for the kids.
We are a long ways off.
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This conversation reinforces my thinking that our bus system is generally built for two scenarios:
- Those that have no other option
- The one-off folks that have a decent scenario to use the bus to get to where they are going.
#2 is a small portion, they certainly don’t put the “mass” in mass transit but they are out there. Raleigh’s future plans hopes to expand that group of people and if it goes from 0.5% (just a guess) to 3% in 10 years, that’s a win for sure. Then, you figure out how to get that even higher and higher, etc.
Right now, kids taking the bus only works in specific situations, these one-offs. Perhaps on the second wave of transit, 10 years or so, we can get higher ridership with accommodating schools. Maybe by then public trust in the bus system will be higher than it is today.
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Yet we have no problem sticking our kids in their own personal vehicles, not to mention having to drive them everywhere until they are at least 16. Seems irrational to me.
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