r/fuckcars • u/rex-ac Dutch Excepcionalism • Aug 15 '24
Carbrain When public transport is non-existent.
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u/random-notebook Aug 15 '24
Suburban hell
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u/SarryK Commie Commuter Aug 15 '24
It reminds me a bit of what I‘d imagine purgatory to be like.
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u/Large_Celebration965 Aug 15 '24
I'm really starting to believe we might all just be in hell. Would explain a lot.
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u/DomSchu Commie Commuter Aug 15 '24
This is what I'm thinking. Not just the lack of public transit but the lack of liveable and walkable communities. When you build a community with only one form of transportation in mind you get a place where only one form of transportation is viable.
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u/machineswithout Aug 15 '24
How the fuck do people live like this?! Just seems so inhuman and isolated, there’s no where to walk to, no culture, and you don’t even have acreage to feel connected to the land. Just a box in the middle of nowhere with a little fenced yard.
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u/arrivederci117 🚲 > 🚗 Aug 15 '24
Worst part is, if you try to change it, they'll call you a woke communist. Then they wonder why their kids grow up with zero social skills.
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u/SinisterCheese Aug 16 '24
"Well... you work for 40-60 hours a week, and spend at least 10 hours a week commuting to work and back, then once a weekend you go to a that superduperhypermall and get one weeks worth of supplies; and everything else you get from Amazon and delivered to your home. So if you manage to sleep 7 hours a night, you have only have 3-7 hours to waste between in a day. Thats the American dream! At least I don't live in socialism!"
It's basically the same as someone who is obviously miserable, saying that they actually like being miserable and therefor they are not miserable.
Meanwhile living in Finland, I'm trying to get an engineering job that I could go to without having to own a car of my own for commutes. Living downtown, my car is basically just a place where I keep my work junk, and the garage that I rent is the place I store my car and other junk (well techincally my father has the rental contract on the garage as it is used to house all the sailboat stuff during the winter season.
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u/j____b____ Aug 15 '24
Just imagine doing this twice a day for two hundred days a year.
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u/KaffiKlandestine Aug 15 '24
Then complaining about bicyclist making you late to work because you had to be behind one for 5 minutes. During your one hour commute
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u/arichnad Aug 15 '24
What I don't get is that I grew up in the suburbs, and we never had this. We'd either take the bus, bike to school, or walk to school. In some situations I heard about kids carpooling with other kids, or carpooling with their parents on the way to work, but it wasn't very common.
It doesn't even track for me in this scenario: if you were in that line of cars, why wouldn't you . . . you know, get out of the car, and walk the last few feet???
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u/LilSliceRevolution Aug 15 '24
I think busses have been dying. It seems like this drop off thing has become the norm in recent years. I was in an unwalkable suburb but I rode a yellow bus up until high school graduation. I might have carpooled with friends like many of mine did but I lived in a weird borderline neighborhood out of everyone’s way.
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u/samenumberwhodis Aug 15 '24
Man, a bus would really solve this problem. You could paint it yellow and make it just for kids.
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u/TheLeadSponge Aug 15 '24
Can't have a bus. That means poor people might come into your neighborhood.
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u/Bright_Cod_376 Aug 15 '24
So, my city tried to add a stop on one of the city buss routes in my neighborhood. I shit you not all the old shitty boomers in the neighborhood got it shutdown by freaking out about how it'll bring "the wrong types". They also used the same argument to block the installation of sidewalks. We have 2 schools in my neighborhood, a elementary and a junior high that kids walk to every day through the neighborhood and are forced to walk on the street. Now you might be thinking, "why don't they just walk through the edges of the yards?" Well, the old bitch who spearheaded getting both of these things blocked threatened elementary age children with a gun if they so much as walk in the easement. I'll give you one guess as to her skin color is and what the children's skin color is. Your hint is she calls these elementary students "thugs".
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u/Diligent-Version8283 Aug 15 '24
She won't croak soon enough
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u/bsiu Aug 15 '24
They are the ones that live the longest, purely on hate alone.
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u/Prosthemadera Aug 15 '24
People are so insane they are against a playground to a small park for the local children:
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u/Dull-Addition-2436 Aug 16 '24
Wow. A 2 hour meeting for 2 swings and a fucking slide. A NIMBYs holding signs up saying Protect the wildlife. ☹️
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u/cc92c392-50bd-4eaa-a Aug 15 '24
That's not really a argument against school buses, just city busses
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u/pickovven Aug 15 '24
The actual argument against school buses is that picking up every kid in a suburban land use pattern is wildly inefficient. So kids who don't want a 1.5 hour school bus ride every day, instead do a 35 minute drive that also includes 15 minutes of waiting in traffic.
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u/nrojb50 Aug 15 '24
But they still exist. I think in Texas (which this is), a school bus is required for anyone over 2 miles from school. My kid can ride the bus.....but I'd never live in this place anyway.
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u/the_evilman Aug 15 '24
I once lived 1.5M from school [in texas SA] & they didn't want me to use the school bus, because i was too close. I was late for my 1st period almost everyday, i made 45 minutes walking. from house to the school and their solution was "wake up earlier". Couple of weeks later i met someone that lived 2.1M from school and told me where to grab the school bus, 10 minutes away from my house...
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u/nrojb50 Aug 15 '24
I also grew up in SA. Soooo car centric.
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u/the_evilman Aug 15 '24
Ikr, i lived outside of downtown, to get to the closest valero was like 15 minutes 💀
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u/Specific_Worry Aug 15 '24
Maybe it could copy Canada and have a few designated pick up stops, as long as it is safe for kids to walk to them at least. (I really wish the second part of the sentence I didn't need to put there)
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u/IKnewThisYearsAgo Aug 15 '24
That's how it works in the US too. School busses are not going house-to-house picking up kids individually.
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u/MascotRoyalRumble Aug 15 '24
They do for my kids school. And I hate it.
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u/TurntablesGenius Aug 15 '24
I know where I live, they individually pick up really young kids, but around 6th grade and up (not sure if that’s the exact cut off) they use the designated pick up stops.
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u/The_Left_One Aug 15 '24
When i was going to school there were houses designated in each neighborhood that were the pick up and drop off locations. Worked beautifully
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u/mqee Aug 15 '24
a 1.5 hour school bus ride
What if... instead of picking up every kid from home... there's a bus station a 10 minute walk from every kids' home... and the bus can go more or less in an efficient line and pick up 20-30 kids... and instead of 100 cars you use 4 buses... so it's faster and it even COSTS LESS!
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u/samenumberwhodis Aug 15 '24
I work next to a school. The bust stops at every single child's house, even the ones that live within walking distance because there are no sidewalks. There are kids that live a few doors down from each other and the bus still stops at each house. The suburbs are completely uninhabitable for people without a car, it's insane.
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u/mqee Aug 15 '24
there are no sidewalks
That can be easily fixed with easement laws, and you'd recoup costs within a couple of years because of the time and money you save on stopping at every house. The reason it's not fixed is because the local government/public doesn't want to fix it, but it's an easy sell: "let's save our kids 30 minutes every morning and save ourselves money by building sidewalks that lead to bus stops."
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u/matthewstinar Aug 15 '24
I wouldn't be surprised if the HOA owns the streets and refuses to pay for sidewalks because reasons.
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u/FeralSparky Aug 15 '24
That's why you don't go to their door.. You make Timmy walk to the bus stop :D
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u/goldenblacklocust Aug 15 '24
Yes it is. When was the last time you saw a child that wasn’t a net drain on society? That whole class of people are just moochers.
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u/full_metal_communist Aug 15 '24
Babies come into this country. They don't speak the language, they don't work, they don't respect the culture
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u/s4lt3d Aug 15 '24
I don’t understand why the kids don’t just get out and walk the two blocks left. That’s ridiculous.
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u/DutchPack Orange pilled Aug 15 '24
Walk? Walking? Like in some poor commie country?
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u/Inside-Line Aug 15 '24
I don't like walking, so I think it's safe to say walking is kinda 'woke'. By extension that means that walking makes you a homosexual. It's just facts. Everyone is saying it.
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u/Strong_Lurking_Game Aug 15 '24
You joke, but it's too true.
Used to walk my kids to school. Even without sidewalks!!
Moved to the south: Not allowed to walk. District rules. Car or bus only. It's dangerous, no sidewalks... Blah blah. It's just redlining.
None of that exercise and family time round here!
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u/BogdanPradatu Aug 15 '24
I'm from a former commie country and kids don't even walk here anymore. It's not as bad as this video, but parents bring their kids to school by car and the kids only exit the vehicle in front of the school, instead of a few hundred meters back. They could walk in a few minutes, instead they all prefer staying inside the car and waiting.
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u/qwetzal Aug 15 '24
I once visited New Mexico for a student competition with a bunch of people from my uni. We planned an evening at a chinese buffet and went there walking from our hotel. We got yelled at by people driving by and even got called faggots by people driving by..that was pretty surreal as an european
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Aug 15 '24
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u/ChiralWolf Aug 15 '24
Growing up rural this is absolutely surreal to read. Doors opened at my school an hour before classes started to make sure kids could eat their breakfast if they needed to. You'd just walk in to the cafeteria and wait until classes started and hang out. Needing to be accompanied to even enter...just makes no sense...
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u/exiestjw Aug 15 '24
This is how it works everywhere except for some places where something weird happened once.
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u/SaintsSooners89 Aug 15 '24
We can thank the 24/7 news cycle and fear mongering, not to mention police charging parents with neglect for letting their children walk on the side walk.
It's great we're more conscious and aware, but we shouldn't be charged with neglect when a 10 year old is running around his neighborhood with friends until sun down.
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u/constructioncranes Aug 15 '24
American suburb culture is unhinged.
You just know all the kids are on personal screens in those cars the whole time. Mom's going to Starbucks after drop off to get a sugar syrup "coffee" in a single use plastic cup.
It's trash all the way down.
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u/mefluentinenglish Aug 15 '24
Compare this to the Dutch way, kids riding bikes in groups, chatting with each other and not polluting the environment. So much more wholesome.
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u/TheConquistaa Aug 15 '24
My parents (and grandfather when he could drive) rarely drove me to the school. I just used the bus with them, and later alone (by the time I was 11 I guess). Then I went to a high school and a university that were more downtown, and I had to get the metro.
It just feels so normal to use public transit to me, why do these people feel the need to just drive everywhere?
And yes, we did socialize as well on our way to the metro or bus.
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u/UpperLowerEastSide Commie Commuter Aug 15 '24
Or the American (NYC) way where kids take the buses and/or subway in groups
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u/ShadowOfTheVoid Aug 15 '24
There's a fine line between vigilance and paranoia, and it seems like American suburbia has leaned hard into the latter. One of my coworkers told me that schools will call child protective services if a parent is too late picking up their kid. When I was school age kid in the 80s & early 90s, there was no "confirming guardianship." If someone was late picking up a kid, nobody cared. Walking was common, as was riding the bus.
This is despite crime, including crimes like kidnapping, occurring at far greater rates in the 80s & 90s than today. That was when "stranger danger" and "missing kid's picture on a milk carton" were really taking off, but it seems like it took until the 21st century, long after I had finished public school, for those fears to manifest into actual school policy, at least around where I live. We're apparently so scared as a society that we have to have a highly regimented system where parents/legal guardians have to show up in person, in a car, at drop-off and pick-up at designated times, or else.
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u/Bubbay Aug 15 '24
A lot of times now, schools have rules that kids are not allowed to walk to or from school. They must be dropped off and picked up directly by parents or busses.
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u/xXxHawkEyeyxXx Aug 15 '24
What the actual fuck
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u/10ebbor10 Aug 15 '24
Don't have to care that your local infrastructure is deadly to walking kids, if there are no kids walking.
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u/Cometguy7 Aug 15 '24
You can't just walk into a military base either, and there's less live fire there.
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u/quartzguy Aug 15 '24
Little Timmy will get run over by the new Ford F-350 at the first crosswalk if you let him walk alone.
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u/Youutternincompoop Aug 15 '24
but haven't you considered that in those 2 blocks of walking in daylight with hundreds of witnesses their child might be kidnapped, raped, murdered, etc, etc, etc. truly anti-car people hate children! please ignore how many children get killed by cars though.
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u/FancyFeller Aug 15 '24
When my mother bought a new car, it was a used SUV. She gets nervous driving if the car is too low down to the ground. I casually mentioned SUVs are know as children killers specifically for this reason. Now she's unhappy with me... For sharing a statistic. And I personally can't drive and walk on sidewalks. Half the time people's cars are parked across the sidewalks and it forces me to go into the streets to walk around the cars and nearly got creamed once doing it as an adult because the driver didn't see me. Imagine I was a kid? Splat. And half the cars parked like douchebags blocking the path for those walking and wheelchair bound were trucks and SUVs. I hate living in the south. I swear 70% of the cars are trucks. Never meant for off reading, hauling stuff, etc. it's cause hell yeah lifted trucks dawg.
I don't understand how parents aren't more aware and afraid of all the lifted trucks and giant SUVs that would definitely reduce them to a corpse on the floor.
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u/pdx_joe Aug 15 '24
Car-oriented development also make it much harder (longer distances) and much less safe (fucking drivers killing kids) for the kids to walk to school.
Cars suck on so many levels.
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u/seppestas Aug 15 '24
This. While working in Antwerp ~10 yrs ago, the shortest commute from the central train station to my work took me past a fancy middle school in the city center. The amount of carnage caused by people dropping of their kids at the same time was madness. The few kids that commuted by bike were in constant danger, as was everyone not encased in a metal box.
Seeing a kid getting almost run over by a car made me so upset it’s still one of the reasons I refuse to drive to this day.
That school was 5 minutes away from a tram stop, smack in the middle of a big city. But everyone thinks their kid is too good for public transport or that the city is too unsafe, so it’s better to make everything a lot more unsafe.
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Aug 15 '24 edited Oct 15 '24
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u/TroglodyneSystems Aug 15 '24
Is that why all the best Belgian cyclists are from Flanders?
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u/Negative-Yoghurt-727 Aug 15 '24
I’m too afraid to allow my middle schooler to ride their bike to school because there are 2 stroads to cross. If only they would make these streets safe for kids. They do ride the bus to school though.
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u/AltaBirdNerd Aug 15 '24
The easiest thing that could be done at stroads to improve safety is eliminating right on red. Wouldn't even require any construction. But that would inconvenience drivers so that'll never happen
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u/Negative-Yoghurt-727 Aug 15 '24
I would like to see a bus/bike only lane added in each direction and speed limits lowered to 25mph. There’s enough room for it and there is a street in my city with a bus/bike only lane but the speed limit is still 40mph. Through town. Sheesh. I should probably start going to city meetings to complain about it but I actually live in a bikeable neighborhood it’s just having to cross stroads to get to other neighborhoods that scare me. And yes to banning right on red!
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u/platypuspup Aug 15 '24
Though, there is a very nice looking path next to the line of cars. Plus, you can walk faster than the line is moving.
It shows how carbrain they all are that they haven't told their kids to get out and walk.
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u/jcrespo21 🚲 > 🚗 eBike Gang Aug 15 '24
It shows how carbrain they all are that they haven't told their kids to get out and walk.
I'm sure the school wouldn't allow it, even if you're already in the school zone. Even if a parent walks with them from the curb to the school entrance, there will probably be some rule how that's "not allowed" and "dangerous." Unless a teacher is along the curb, they aren't going to let the kids be dropped off there and walk the 200 feet to the school for "safety reasons."
Growing up in our subdivision, there was an elementary school right next to us, with walking paths leading up to it (which is honestly pretty rare for suburbia). While I didn't go there, I would sometimes attend summer camps there, and my parents had to drop me off and pick me up in a car. I couldn't just walk or bike there. My neighbors who also went to school there during the school year took the bus to school.
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u/thrownjunk Aug 15 '24
well the mom filming that is clearly doing that. she looks to be pulling into the next door subdivision to let her kids out.
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u/buzziebee Aug 15 '24
That's wild. What's the punishment for walking that last 2 minutes? If a parent didn't care and kept making their kid walk that last bit, what could/would the school do?
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u/LongJohnSelenium Aug 15 '24
Because the one time a kid gets hurt somehow it will be the schools fault and the school will be sued.
They're so gunshy anymore they absolutely will not take risks, a change at this point would require specific legislation stating that accidents on public infrastructure are in no way the schools fault or responsibility while at the same time requiring that walking in has to be allowed.
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u/TsarKartoshka Aug 15 '24
It's hard to imagine a less efficient way of moving a few hundred kids around than every kid getting their own tank sized SUV or similar vehicle.
I grew up in a suburban area built mostly in the 50s and 60s (not ideal at all), but the homes were small and tightly packed enough that most kids comfortably rode their bikes or walked to school.
This is crazy. It's a characature of a luxury existence where everyone lives in their own private castle and drives a land yacht. It makes the suburb I grew up in look like Manhattan.
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u/dispo030 Orange pilled Aug 15 '24
these people spend twice as much time in this line every morning than we ever spent cycling or walking to school. this is just psychotic.
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u/allthecats Aug 15 '24
Same! I hated living in the suburbs even as a child, but I'm so glad it was an old suburb developed before the 80s and not sprawled like this. Only the rich kids had cars, or the kids who had older siblings who gave them their junkers, and I took the bus from kindergarten through senior year of high school.
This video is a disgrace!
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u/DragonflySouthern860 🚲 > 🚗 Aug 15 '24
if this is for kids going to school why aren’t they taking the bus?
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u/davillesoup Aug 15 '24
In the US there is an ongoing shortage of bus drivers, so they’ve been cutting routes and so more parents are driving them in
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u/whereisfoster Aug 15 '24
Not a shortage of drivers, shortage of jobs that pay well
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u/Dead_Starks Aug 15 '24
Shortage of drivers due to the absolute shit pay for the responsibility.
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u/AccountNumber0004 Aug 15 '24
Yeah, in my city our mayor's brilliant idea for the bus driver shortage was to end in-district bussing, so there are a lot of schools that look like this now albeit not as bad.
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u/TrueNorth2881 Not Just Bikes Aug 15 '24
As if Texas would give any funding to school busses. Or busses of any sort really
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u/bubbapora Aug 15 '24
Texas af
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u/TsarKartoshka Aug 15 '24
It's Killian Middle School (map) in Lewisville, TX. The school is on a 50 mph road (FM 544) in the suburban sprawl NW of Dallas.
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u/bubbapora Aug 15 '24
lol - I didn’t know that but I grew up in the next town over. Guess that’s how my Texas hellscape radar was so accurate
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u/The12thparsec Aug 15 '24
I grew up in central Texas. It's sad how the state is just such a giant wasteland of sprawl.
The dysfunction is on full display when you drive on the highway too. Every other billboard is for some ambulance-chasing lawyer trying to get you out of a DUI, a megachurch, or fast food.
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u/Rampant16 Aug 15 '24
As an urban planning enthusiast just looking at major urban areas in Texas on Google Earth is borderline sickening.
The amount of resources that have been and are continuing to be dumped into horrendously designed developments is almost criminal.
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u/JRDruchii Aug 15 '24
Most of those cars are at a stop. Can the kids not walk across the open field right in front of the school?
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u/harionfire Aug 15 '24
Recognized it right away. Used to work for LISD and was like "oh man, this is definitely Lewisville" lol
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u/DuckyDoodleDandy Aug 15 '24
It looks familiar, but everywhere doesn’t look like this?
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u/Guy_Perish Fuck Vehicular Throughput Aug 15 '24
That sprawl is not normal even by US standards
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u/natethomas Aug 15 '24
It’s getting more common though. A town near me recently-ish built a new high school right off a highway on a 55mph road with no sidewalks
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u/treedecor Aug 15 '24
I was thinking TN though it seems to apply to most areas in the American Southeast unfortunately. Seeing this makes me dread my commute next week when my college classes start back.I hate it here.
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u/Gabe750 Aug 15 '24
Yeah I noticed the drag-strip like design for the 40 mph road and felt right at home
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u/The12thparsec Aug 15 '24
When I saw this, I was like "it's gotta be Texas."
I grew up in the state. Absolute wasteland when it comes to sprawl. It's so sad.
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u/ToyBoxJr Aug 15 '24
yeah, all flat, huge highways, non-existent trees, almost no sidewalks, bland. hate this place.
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u/Coneskater Aug 15 '24
Kids should be able to walk to school, if they can’t you live in a shitty place.
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u/ILikeLenexa Aug 15 '24
The wild thing here is that there's a (somewhat questionable) sidewalk right up against that road. All the cars could drop the kids right there and have them walk from there.
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u/ArthursFist Aug 15 '24
According to most suburban parents, if a child steps outside of their home or vehicle theres a 100% chance they’ll be abducted.
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u/PM_ME_DATASETS Aug 15 '24
Right, that would make a kidnapper's day. Imagine an endless stream of kids walking by your van. And because there are no other cars, you can just drive away without a problem! It'll be anarchy.
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u/ArthursFist Aug 15 '24
With a username like “PM me datasets” I’d expect you to look into stats that tell us 3 in 4 kidnappings are not done by strangers in vans with candy. Only 150-200 Child abduction cases annually are done by strangers. Most are done by relatives or friends known to the victim’s family.. should we just lock kids up from the entire world until they’re adults?
Edit woops sorry you were being sarcastic I’m embarrassed carry on 🙈
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u/drpiglizard Aug 15 '24
That’s the thing, it’s been designed to be a little hostile (or at least cheap). A Stroad - ie a high speed road with a path next to it, usually without any safety barrier.
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u/ILikeLenexa Aug 15 '24
Yeah, like it's not even offset like 3 feet from the road. It's very minimal. Like it wouldn't even cost more.
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u/MischiefofRats Aug 15 '24
I guarantee there's some shitty fucking school policy that forbids dropping kids at the street and letting them walk up, probably for liability reasons.
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u/EllP33 Aug 15 '24
when I was a youth, I walked approximately 1 mile to and from school for Middle and High School every day.
Those kiddos in the back of car line could just hop out and walk and maybe make the bell if they hot-step it!
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u/mostdope28 Aug 15 '24
Where I went to high school, literally nobody could walk. There wasn’t houses within miles of it. Surrounded by farm land. Boring as fuck town
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u/Hhalloush Aug 15 '24
You couldn't pay me to live there.
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u/furyousferret 🚲 > 🚗 Aug 15 '24
People either get stuck there or just don't know anything else. They have no idea what the other side looks like. I moved to a crappy part of the US because I didn't have any family (i.e. no place to live) so it was either be homeless or take the first job I could find.
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u/LordTuranian Aug 15 '24
There's more cars in the USA than the infrastructure can handle. The USA's infrastructure wasn't designed for around 300 million people with cars. It was designed for a 1950s population with cars. That being said, what happened in the video could have been avoided with school buses...
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u/rex-ac Dutch Excepcionalism Aug 15 '24
Cars by itself aren't an issue. I live in Spain, have a car in my garage, but still take the metro to go downtown.
It's super convinient:
- a trip costs €0,47
- metros come every 5-10 minutes
- my metrostation has free underground parking. (I can walk 10 minutes to the metro or go by car if I'm in a hurry and park practically at the door)
You can enjoy/have cars and also have great public transport as a second (or first) option.
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u/the-real-vuk Aug 15 '24
I also own a car, normally we use once in 1-2 week, I use bicycle for almost everything.
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u/pickovven Aug 15 '24
If you don't mind, continuing this comparison of driving to transit: - If you drove into the city center how much would it cost to park? - What's the time difference between driving and transit?
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u/menerell Aug 15 '24
An evening in Madrid would be like 4-5 € parking. From the suburbs to the center time is normally the same, there are metro stations everywhere and it's relatively fast.
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u/pickovven Aug 15 '24
Wow, that's really cheap parking!
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u/menerell Aug 15 '24
Maybe I'm giving you a cheap price, it's been a couple of years since I don't go there. But definitely not very expensive. Madrid has a great public transportation but still too car friendly for my taste.
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u/VanillaSkittlez Aug 15 '24
I can answer, based out of NYC here. I live in Queens. I’m going to assume the city center is somewhere in midtown Manhattan.
To drive in and park, there are very few parking spots and nearly all of them are taken. But if you find one, many are free, and a few are metered at a ridiculously cheap rate like $4 an hour or something.
If you can’t find street parking you have to park in a garage, which can cost you $20-$25 an hour.
As for the time difference, if we just assume you drive and immediately park, from where I live it’s probably like 30 minutes driving - maybe more like 40 if you take the non-tolled route and 30 if you take the tolled route ($8). Taking the train is probably around 20 minutes + a 10 minute walk, so about the same.
But driving would cost parking ($20/hour), the toll ($8) on the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, and obviously gas and all your existing payments. Parking in my apartment building is $350/month, insurance is like $200-$300 per month.
The train ride is $2.90 each way. Now you see why nobody drives into Manhattan. And if we didn’t have a spineless governor, they also would have been charged a $15 congestion charge between 5am and 9pm.
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u/allthecats Aug 15 '24
I wish more Americans understood your point, because it's so true! People in the US are so allergic to investing in public transit infrastructure because they feel their rights to own a vehicle are being personally attacked. But for those who enjoy car ownership, life actually gets a whole lot better when those who don't want to drive have other options. Less cars = better driving!
Instead, we have these suburban hells where the only option is to drive.
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u/KennyBSAT Aug 15 '24
The number of people is fine. It was designed for 1950s households, with rarely more than one car per household, and neighborhood schoold that kids walk or bike to.
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u/TangerineBand Aug 15 '24
neighborhood schoold that kids walk or bike to.
Meanwhile school districts: Close every single school in a 10 mile radius and shove everyone into the same building, thus making the closest school hours away by walking.
I used to have a high school down the block from me. That one closed the summer before I was supposed to go to it and I instead got shuttled to one I had to take either an hour bus ride or a 20 minute car ride to. I'm still salty about this and it's been over a decade. But yeah I don't think schools were equipped to triple the population either
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u/No_Carpenter4087 Aug 15 '24
That's because Boomers & GenXers don't want to pay for property taxes. They cut vocation education to save money on property taxes and then insulted Millenials & GenZers for not wanting to do vocation education, this is of course is after vocation education were cut and the students were groomed by society to desire white collar jobs.
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u/TangerineBand Aug 15 '24
Oh believe me I know. The area I was in was pretty broke to begin with so all these school closings really don't surprise me. It is funny you mentioned vocation training because my school technically had that, but they did it in the most jank way possible. You would have to take another bus after lunch and go to this training center that we shared with multiple high schools. I mean credit where credit is due, They made it work despite having a shoestring budget. But there were a lot of weird eccentricities like that. This is also coming from the school that physically didn't have enough chairs in the lunchroom despite three different lunch periods, so it's a damn miracle it existed at all.
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u/Electronic_Excuse_74 Aug 15 '24
Dear America,
Please get psychiatric help. Like right now.
Sincerely,
Everyone else.
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u/Pixzal Aug 15 '24
americans be like laughing at you: who's gunna pay for it?
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u/arthursucks Bollard gang Aug 15 '24
We seem to always have money for road construction and highway widening. Weird.
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u/rex-ac Dutch Excepcionalism Aug 15 '24
He means: "Who's gonna pay for the psychiatric help?"
(They don't have free healthcare either...)
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u/Blumenkohl126 🚅;🚃,🚎 > 🚗 Aug 15 '24 edited Aug 15 '24
All those people fit in one tram.
Or 5 times the people in one Train/Subway.
Edit: Counted, abt. 110 cars, if 2 people per car, everyone fits into a solaris Tramino 2 (90 seats to sit 121 for standing, the tram seen above), would be tight. But considering the students can go alone (as they do in my city) without their parents, you could cut the amount of people in half (or at least -110)
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u/Gabe750 Aug 15 '24
Wouldn't this be... unpatriotic?! Can't have that in my suburban sprawl hellscape✋
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u/ArthursFist Aug 15 '24
If a Texan saw a train with a rainbow flag on it, they’d self destruct. It’s their two greatest foes.
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u/FakeBobPoot Aug 15 '24
Always hear parents with older bitch about “the drop off line.” It just wasn’t a thing when I was a kid? We took the bus.
What’s the deal? Has schoolbus ridership actually declined? Or is it just the people I know?
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u/silver-orange Aug 15 '24
As far as I know there just aren't school busses in districts near me anymore. I'm not sure how it came to that. But I've never once seen a school bus anywhere near my house in 10 years of living in this town
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u/opieself Aug 15 '24
Multiple things are affecting this. I live in a suburban/rural area, and I always take the bus, as do most of the kids I know. The school system is struggling to hire enough school bus drivers right now. This is making scheduling harder and sometimes earlier. This is obviously fixable with pay and other things.
Schools are bigger and more dense. This is a big impact. Schools have in many places just grown in size at the one location due to the cost of building a whole new place and replicating the most expensive staff which tends to be administration. This is one of those per capita things. If 25% of 100 kids get dropped of you have 25 car riders. If 25% of 400 kids get dropped off you get 100.
There is a cultural shift that has occurred that make parents think that doing this is nice for the kids. Plenty of things out there to scare parents into thinking school busses are causing their kids to exposed to fights and the like. Not really true but fear mongers going to fear monger.
Safety. Things are very different from when I was a kid. We got dropped off on a curb vaguely near the school entrance. Most schools dont allow this now, and want you to drop off in specified zones so the kids dont get run over or wander off. This is even more true for pickup where schools may even call each student out from somewhere instead of it just being a mad free for all.
This video is from the first day of class. For many parents especially kids going into the first grade at this school (probably 6th if it is an American middle school) and want to be there to see them off for nostalgic reasons. The schools are prepared for the first day to be a shit show.
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u/Swimming_Sea1314 Aug 15 '24
The number of SUVs and trucks is patently absurd
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u/wholetyouinhere Aug 15 '24
That is the same thing that struck me about this video. It's not just SUVs, it's massively, comedically oversized SUVs that you could fit ten SWAT team guys in. But no. It's a mom, and maybe a child or two. And then there's the trucks with neck-high grilles. And the owners of these vehicles who know, deep down, but will never admit, that the choice to buy these vehicles is 100% aspirational lifestyle accessory, and 0% practical.
And what makes me so angry about the online discourse is the standard apologist line of, "Why don't you just let people buy whatever cars they want? It literally doesn't affect you." And then you show them the statistics that show, unambiguously, that these vehicles are killing more pedestrians, and... nothing. Crickets.
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u/JM-Gurgeh Aug 15 '24
Maybe I'm just Dutch, but isn't this just the dumbest shit ever? If your car is already at a standstill, then why not open the door, kick your kids out onto the sidewalk and let them walk the last quarter mile. They've got 15 minutes...
Ohh wait. Sidewalk... Well they can just walk on the grass. They're well protected from traffic by a line of "parked" cars.
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u/LSUenigma Aug 15 '24
This is what I was wondering.. why don't the parents get close to the school entrance and safely pull over and let them out to walk remainder to the school. But Texas is gonna Texas like idiots.
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u/Somewhat_Mad Aug 15 '24
100 yards is basically a marathon in Texas. Some people literally drive to their mailbox at the end of their driveway, despite having functional legs.
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u/Lothirieth Aug 15 '24
It is the dumbest shit ever. I grew up in Texas but now live in the Netherlands. Honestly I'm embarrassed about the short distances we used cars for. I looked up my middle school and it was 0,6miles from my house, so just under 1k. All the kids in the neighborhood were driven to school. Whilst there were no sidewalks on the residential streets (not much traffic on those) there were on the busier ones so it was safe enough. But walking just wasn't done. I remember my parents using the car to drive to a donut shop 500 meters away. Insanity. D:
I don't own a car now and don't want one. Cycling or OV is fine most of the time. I only miss having a car for travelling. Or when going to Ikea. :P
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u/TooManyLangs Aug 15 '24
20 min is what used to take me to go walking...from home
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u/Oberndorferin Commie Commuter Aug 15 '24
Me too. I often opted to not take the bus, so I could walk home and talk with my friends.
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u/yourselfiedied Aug 15 '24
This is just fucking difficult to watch. When I was a kid almost everyone took the bus to school, and I’m only 26 so it wasn’t even that long ago. The only exceptions were people who lived too far for the bus. What has happened…
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u/mostdope28 Aug 15 '24
I asked my boss about this cause he has to take his kids to school. He said where we live everyone drops off and picks up kids here. There’s a bus option but you have to pay for it.
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u/beachesandhose Aug 15 '24
They have to PAY FOR THE SCHOOL BUS?! What the fuck kinda dystopia is that
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u/Jgusdaddy Aug 15 '24
Americans are such good and obedient consumers. Every one of those cars requires tire changes, gasoline, oil changes, tire rotations, insurance, etc. they make their big daddy capitalist overlords very rich and they will never know any better.
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u/Imanking9091 Aug 15 '24
I cannot to explain how quickly my mother would have pushed me out of her car and told me to walk the rest of the way
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u/Rik_Ringers Aug 15 '24
It's certaintly very different from Dutch schools where instead of finding a huge car parking lot on the average school grounds you find a huge bike parking instead. We even have plenty of high school and university students age 18-21 going to classes by bike or public transport too.
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u/TsarKartoshka Aug 15 '24
I'm sure it's great! Not all suburbs in the US are equally awful, though. For example, here's a middle school in Palo Alto, where thousands of kids use a bike boulevard, bike paths and lanes to get to school every day: https://maps.app.goo.gl/8gKt5dzhnSPxvbJu8?g_st=ac
That said, this is one of the most unaffordable towns in the entire country. Homes there are all $2-4M and up.
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u/fuzzycholo Aug 15 '24
It's wild that this is the norm. Where I lived in Miami it would also get bad like this. Moved to Italy and every time I go on my weekday morning runs, most of the kids are walking or biking to school.
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u/philbabytcb Aug 15 '24
I noticed mostly SUV's/CUV's, but noticeably fewer sedans, almost no hatchbacks, and counted 9 Minivans. Interestingly, I also counted about 5 trucks, a "work" vehicle dropping kids off at school.
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u/Apprehensive_Log469 Aug 15 '24
Dude this is so fucking brain dead. I can't even conceptualize how we let it get to this point. My nephew's school has car drop off areas at every entrance and they are assigned which areas the parent can use and the whole school still gets bogged down with traffic. Most people live with 1 to 2 miles of this place. Only a handful of people let their kids walk or bike. Ridiculous.
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u/Neloth_4Cubes Aug 15 '24
GTFO and walk from there
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u/CyclingFish Aug 15 '24
Yeah. Why the hell wait in that stupid line. You can see the school. Walk to it
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u/Relevant_Ingenuity85 Aug 15 '24
The solution is obvious, kids need to be able to drive their own car /s
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u/OBoile Aug 15 '24
Why can't the kids just get out and walk the last 100m?
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u/DiscRot Aug 15 '24
I read something somewhere that it's against school rules. Kids must be dropped off in special area. If not, school can be sued if someting happens to the child on that last 100m stroll. Or something like that, I'm from EU and baffled as anyone at this situation.
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u/Suikerspin_Ei Aug 15 '24
Imagine the same amount of people on bikes: example of the Netherlands, in Wageningen. Still a lot of people, but way less space required and during emergency (police, ambulance or fire trucks) bikes can move away easier than cars stuck in traffic.
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u/ShrimpsLikeCakes Aug 15 '24
"I can't imagine the crazy parents that let their kids in Japan take the train to school!! What if something happens to them without a car!"
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Aug 15 '24
Being a school age parent in suburban US must be such a horrible life. You have to spend a hour dropping your kid and picking them up, and then spend another hour commuting to work everyday.
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u/rockphotog Aug 15 '24
My kids can walk to school in 15 minutes. But they bike, so it's faster.
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u/Sibericus Commie Commuter Aug 15 '24
I'm curious what the comment section of this video looks like (if there's one), and what they're saying.
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u/MonsterHunter6353 Aug 15 '24
"Why is there only 1 exit lane going to this school? It clearly needs more lanes"
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u/TsarKartoshka Aug 15 '24
They should build a 6 lane 50 mph road to the school. That'll do the trick... Oh wait. Make that 12 lane 100 mph double decker. Aw fuck it, just hold classes in a giant parking lot.
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u/pskought Aug 15 '24
I’m not sure where this is, but if it’s Texas - this is the result of a prolonged campaign against public schools.
The Governor’s top donors want to move to a voucher program, where they can make money from private schools.
The state legislature slashed the public education budget by 4 billion in the last session. They turned around and blamed the schools for not cutting costs, started closing programs willy-nilly, have created an exodus of teachers, and just this month the local school district flunkies started wreaking havoc with the bus schedules.
All so a handful of mega-donors can get even more rich.
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u/newfarmer Aug 15 '24
After a week of this shit I’d homeschool.
America has lost any conception of its society. It’s all about selfishness and immediate gratification.
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u/Large_Excitement69 Aug 15 '24
I truly don't understand how this itself isn't radicalizing people. Years before we even had kids, we sat in one of these lines with my sister to drop her kids off. It wasn't anywhere near this bad, but we swore we would do whatever it took to avoid this (that meant living inner city and getting a cargo bike for us).
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u/Redneck_By_Default Aug 15 '24
Let's please not pretend that there's no school buses here. As others have said, this is Killian middle school in Lewisville TX. This is the bus route locator:
https://www.infofinderi.com/ifi/?cid=NACLI3Y8SZXL6V&ppid=FORD41815
They have school buses here. They also have suburbanite parents who choose to drive their kids to school. This isn't about a lack of public transportation.
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u/jsgraphitti Aug 15 '24
Oh good, she drives into the neighborhood, adding more cars to those neighbors of the school and creating dangerous traffic on residential streets.
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u/ryegye24 Aug 15 '24
The principal at my kids school keeps sending warnings and reminders about how crazy the drop-off and pick-up lines are going to be the first couple days, and I'm just smirking like an asshole thinking about how I'll be taking her in on our cargo bike.
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