US, Mass Transit & Gas Prices.

[quadraphonics]

It's a bit of both. You can't tell me that a soccer mom that drives the kids to school instead of letting them walk for 10 minutes is doing it out of necessity.

No, but I *can* tell you that the percentage of soccer moms that live within a 10-minute walk (at a child's pace) of a school is negligible.

 

[Astronuc]

My family lives 3 miles from the local high school, and with a brisk walk, it would take about 1 hr, although my son could speed it up and perhaps take 45 or 50 minutes. We live in the suburbs where folks have to walk or ride a bike on the shoulder of busy roads to go anyway.

I actually used to walk about 3-5 miles to school, when it wasn't raining, or take a bicycle, but that was in an urban area with sideways or relatively not so busy streets.

My kids have taken the school bus to school.


I live about 6.5 miles from work and take a car, although I'll seriously considering a bicycle now that the county and towns are serious about putting in some bike paths (which has been under discussion for the last 15-20 years). The present situation involves riding the shoulder on hilly and windy roads (poorly maintained) where speeds are 40-45 mph (but traffic does 50-60 mph). It takes me 13 minutes to drive from home to work (I used to live 47 miles from work). When my daughter is in school (local college), I take her on the way to work, and pick up as much as possible on the way home.

If I take a bus to work, it involves a process that takes about 30min to work, and 1 hr to home because of the circuitous route the bus travels, and the schedule is inflexible. I am then at the mercy of local transportation, which does necessarily go where I need to go or in a reasonable amount of time during the day.

As for the previous job, when I live 47 miles from work, I took a car and the trip lasted 50 minutes on dry pavement and low traffic, but could be 1.5 - 3 hrs oneway in snow and commuter traffic. I looked at PT, but that would have taken 4-5 hrs to get to work because I would have had to take 2 or 3 buses to and from the train station. That would have required 8-10 hrs traveling time each day.

In the nearby city, where the local high schools are surrounded by neighborhoods, kids do walk to school (and they have sidewalks). When I was in elementary school (grade 4-6), I lived 2 blocks from the school, so I walked, unless it was raining, in which case my dad dropped us (my brother too) off on the way to work.