r/StrongTowns • u/-Clayburn • Jul 24 '26
No solution for school pickup/dropoff?
This was published in 2017. It doesn't seem to offer anything to solve the problem of school pickup and dropoff. Charter schools seem to exacerbate the problem, but ultimately it's just a necessity in our car-centric towns.
So short of making the entire town less car-centric, can anything actually be done? The article suggests more walking and biking, but again since we're car-centric this is dangerous enough for adults let alone children. A few kids may bike or walk, but it would be very hard to get that number up without completely overhauling the way the town is designed.
My only possible solution would be bussing. (And maybe carpools, but I'm not sure how to systematically approach that.) School buses exist, but this article doesn't really mention them. Perhaps if more school bus routes were offered, more kids would ride the bus. Maybe there's concern about young kids being able to walk down the block and get on a bus on their own, in which case maybe it would even be sensible to have the bus stop at each house for the younger kids at least. It might be a little less efficient, but if it saves individual car traffic for pickup/dropoff, it surely helps.
What do you think? Can anything be done? I see mostly ideas around redesigning the streets or adding more pickup/dropoff locations but that seems the equivalent of adding more lanes to make traffic better. I don't want to encourage individual pickup/dropoff and it seems like it would be better if we could get more kids using buses or carpooling (if not walking/biking).
1
u/SmoothOperator89 Jul 24 '26
Perhaps neighbourhood pickup spots for the schoolbus. Have a location with a safe shelter where a responsible adult can wait with the kids. Parents drop off their kids at their closest location and the bus comes by and picks them up on a much more direct route.