The bar chart is pretty funny. "Over 3 miles" is the highest bucket? That's supposed to be far?
I went to school in a semi-rural school district, one of the largest in the state by area. I just checked Google Maps and the high school is 13 miles away, 16 minutes by car (much of it highway), and maybe a half hour by school bus if I remember correctly. It could be a bit tedious, but it wasn't a terrible commute by any means.
> Parents are not simply choosing to drive their children to school because it’s fun to sit in a long line. It is becoming more of a necessity because schools are more spread out than before, or at least families are living further from their schools.
Necessity? I don't see what's wrong with school buses. They're just about the only practical form of mass transit in rural areas. They work for all ages, in any weather where the school is open at all.
> The bar chart is pretty funny. "Over 3 miles" is the highest bucket? That's supposed to be far?
The buckets were chosen because 3 miles is farther than you'd reasonably expect kids to be able to walk to and from school every day. They say this right under the chart.
It's not helpful to do chest-thumping to compare whose farthest away from school when the entire point of the section is that 80% of people fall into that bucket.
> Necessity? I don't see what's wrong with school buses. They're just about the only practical form of mass transit in rural areas.
Again, you've missed the point of the article. In cities, students are spread out in all directions. It's not feasible for a bus to loop around an entire city to pick everyone up when they're spread all over.
Why is it expected that kids should be able to walk to school? Seems like that’s a pretty blinkered view by someone who never leaves the city? In a rural district, very few kids can do that, and that’s why there are buses for everyone else.
Also, why wouldn’t school buses work in a denser area? That’s why they have multiple school buses doing multiple routes.
All the usual arguments for mass transit should apply for school buses, too. Density should make providing bus service easier, not harder.
> Why is it expected that kids should be able to walk to school?
Because we typically don't let kids drive. If they're able to walk to school then they can walk themselves to and from school without the help of an adult (even one driving the bus), once they are responsible enough to.
I went to school in a semi-rural school district, one of the largest in the state by area. I just checked Google Maps and the high school is 13 miles away, 16 minutes by car (much of it highway), and maybe a half hour by school bus if I remember correctly. It could be a bit tedious, but it wasn't a terrible commute by any means.
> Parents are not simply choosing to drive their children to school because it’s fun to sit in a long line. It is becoming more of a necessity because schools are more spread out than before, or at least families are living further from their schools.
Necessity? I don't see what's wrong with school buses. They're just about the only practical form of mass transit in rural areas. They work for all ages, in any weather where the school is open at all.