For parents across America, the school car line is a daily challenge
The stern, annoyed command from some poor teacher or volunteer to “pull all the way forward, please!” The breakdown of the whole process when someone inevitably doesn’t. The long minutes spent idling, spewing exhaust. The cones, and walkie-talkies, and little signs hung from rearview mirrors that help deliver so many kids, individually, right to their school’s doorstep.
Car lines are a classic tragedy-of-the-commons problem: Every parent acting in their perceived self-interest—Oh I’ll just drop him off again; it’ll only take a minute—makes us collectively worse off in the form of dirtier air, increased traffic, less human connection, and more frustration.
This soul-sucking system is sadly the norm. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Reversing the Decline in Walking and Biking to School
A few generations ago, in 1969, nearly one in two kids walked or biked to school. Now only about one in 10 kids gets to school those ways. And only about a third of children who live within just one mile of school walk or bike there. School buses—a onetime rite of passage for American children—have been supplanted as the leading vehicle for getting kids to school. According to the most recent national data, a solid majority of kids—54 percent—are driven to school.
Many school sites now are designed to accommodate winding drop-off lanes, which, although they may improve efficiency, also make accessing the school by foot more difficult and entrench the whole mess. As Seattle’s School Traffic Safety Committee puts it, “Creating new private car infrastructure inequitably favors more affluent families while also setting up the expectation that families will be able to easily drive to and from the school at arrival and departure times.”
I’ve long been a (smug) car-line conscientious objector. Either my kids take the bus to their school in Cleveland, or we bike. When my kids take the bus, I marvel at how much time I save, and I suspect that if the U.S. did not have a long tradition of busing children to school, we wouldn’t provide this service now. (Likewise, if a progressive representative or governor introduced the idea of public libraries now for the first time, people would say the idea was too radical.) When we bike, we have to exercise extreme vigilance in navigating the roads. But that vigilance is worthwhile. I love rolling past all the cars and pulling right up to the front gate, where I can interact with the few other parents who have opted out.
The Challenges and Considerations
I understand why driving is the default. Most American adults hop in the car to go to work anyway, and figure they can swing by the school. But the more parents who choose this option, the worse it works.
I also understand that I’m lucky and privileged to live close enough to school (1.25 miles) to make biking an option. School is just too far away for many kids to access by foot or bike. The number of students living within one mile of their school has declined by about a quarter over the past few decades, as local officials have gravitated toward cheaper land at the periphery of their district for new school sites.
Of course, some parents who could send their kid to a neighborhood school within walking distance choose a private or charter school farther away, motivated (very reasonably) by school quality. My kids attend a city charter school that’s close to us but that draws students from outlying counties. The car line, for some parents, is part of a larger investment in their kids’ future.
Another concern is traffic safety; the U.S. has not done a good job creating safe environments for pedestrians or cyclists of any age, especially in the past decade. Many parents I know say they’d allow their kids to walk or bike to school, except for one dangerous street. I speak from personal experience when I say that securing changes to a problem intersection requires enormous initiative and effort. Success is far from assured.
The Benefits of Using School Buses
Less understandable, and therefore perhaps more alarming, than the decline of walking and biking is the decline in using the bus.
Granted, school starts early and the morning rush to get out of the house is intense. Buses aren’t always the reliable option they once were. Pandemic-related disruptions continue to weigh on education, leading to severe bus-driver shortages for the second year in a row. The problem became so acute in Baltimore that the city offered parents $250 if they agreed to drive their kids to school.
For the most part, though, bus service is available for the taking, and it’s a more socially responsible option than the car line. The average parent who drives their kids to school puts 3,600 extra miles a year on their car—a significant environmental cost. Those extra daily trips also impose costs on neighborhoods, creating sometimes dangerous traffic that may discourage other kids from walking. And I think parents underestimate what children are losing when they forgo that independent time with the friends they would find on the bus.
Encouraging Alternatives and Considering the Future
Young people are having a mental-health crisis right now. Both sedentary behavior and isolation are probable contributors. Even as our culture has become less community-minded, children have become less independent. The replacement of healthy, active, or communal modes of transportation to school with the every-family-for-themselves car line is a symptom of wider dysfunctions affecting all aspects of American life, but young people especially.
I’m not calling for a ban on the car line—in part because no one would heed my call. But a lot of good can come from a nudge here and there to encourage alternatives: permission to cut the line for carpools, school-sponsored “bike buses,” even just emails stressing that bus service is easy and available. Perhaps the best argument is the most self-interested: The car line would be much more efficient for families who really need it if families who didn’t really need it took the bus instead.
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