I Started a Bike Bus (2023) | Hacker News Reader

I Started a Bike Bus (2023)

wired.com

36 pointsmooreds24 comments

I grew up in Texas, only 1 mile away from my elementary school. I was dropped off every single day by car, and only ever used my bike to kill time within my "superblock" (not sure what to call it, but the streets which are blocked in by the 40mph arterial stroads.) I would have loved this!

Even when I went on to middle school (0.5 mile away), I was still dropped off by car. Thinking back, I'm not sure there were even bike racks, though there was of course a massive parking lot. Yikes, in retrospect.

I lived really close to my elementary school, but since it is a country road people would be going double the speed limit not expecting bicycles. There was just no safe way to ride to school. :(

Meanwhile, I walked 1km to Kindergarten on my own with 51/2 in Germany.

What does 51/2 mean?

Maybe they meant 5.5 years old

I see a lot of European languages will say "I have X years" where English says "I am X years old". French at least

Specifying the unit for human age feels a bit formal in German. The unitless number is colloquially used like an adjective: "I am X".

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense in context.

My daily trip to school in Canada involved walking a kilometre or two along a road with no sidewalk. When it snowed the road got narrower but it didn't slow traffic down, so it got very dangerous.

After a decade in Germany, I feel like a prisoner at my parents' house in Canada. It's literally impossible to walk to certain places without walking along fast traffic without a sidewalk. The traffic lights don't work for pedestrians. Nothing is reachable on foot anyway.

Living in Germany now, and just got back from visiting my wife's rural northern Canadian hometown and I totally agree with the feeling of being a prisoner in those places if you don't have a car.

The roads are so wide that you could land a plane on them, yet there's no sidewalks anywhere, or if there is a sidewalk, it's just a solitary sidewalk for a single block that doesn't connect to any other sidewalks.

You can either walk on peoples yards, or find yourself walking right between the gigantic pickup trucks parked on the side of the road and the gigantic pickup trucks zooming down the road as fast as they can and purposefully trying to make pedestrians scared.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a resort town in southern BC which had excellent biking and walking trails at least.

Georgia - also 1 mile from the school. I tried riding by bike with my daughter and the principal called and told me to never do it again as it was too unsafe. She claimed you were only allowed to go to school by car or bus, despite there being a sidewalk.

I can barely describe how foreign all of this is to a Dutch person. Pre-school and school drop-off is with a bike by default - Parents today use every type of cargo bike, but traditionally you’d see just a parent with two bike seats (on front, one rear) until the kids are 4 and able to bike themselves.

This youtube channel does a great job exploring what infrastructure exists to enable this lifestyle: https://youtube.com/@notjustbikes

As an extra set of info: from about 8-9 years old children are often allowed to cycle alone to friends within the neighborhood to play. Around 11-12 years old middle school starts and you are expected to have your kids ready to cycle the city. School has a cycling exam as well. That means getting them to learn the city, know the difference between where separated cycling paths are (safest) and knowing what are the most dangerous situations (in NED: dead angles of trucks and forcing your right of way going straight on a motorist). It quite amazing that this cycling culture is at least 60 years old.

How young can infants go on bike in Netherlands?

Are they literally biking home from hospital after birth?

Not in Netherlands but I put my newborn in my cargo bike in his bassinet from 1 month. Why should he care, no different from a car.

This does exist in the Netherlands, though I've only seen it in one neighborhood. They had signs throughout the whole neighborhood stating "fietsbus 8:30". "Bike bus 8:30". The schedule was fixed to the point they could just put up signs with at what time the bus would be at that place.

It's definitely not a common thing at all though. For most schools people just cycle individually.

I did a bike bus with my kids school elsewhere in Portland this year! Great way to get kids riding. We’d have 2-3 parents on cargo bikes block busy intersections for the kiddos to ride across at their own pace. Probably annoyed some drivers, but they never showed it. Once a car even pulled alongside, slowly and safely, to block traffic even more completely for us.

My home town has a pedibus, which is the same concept but you walk the kids to school, picking them up at various "stops". It's pretty neat, IMHO.

I remember biking to elementary school in 1989/90. I was in fifth grade and loved the freedom. After school, I’d go back home to say hi to mom and then off I was to the mall in my bike. Those were the days …

I went on a group bike ride earlier this year. It was fun, group bike rides should be more common.

http://archive.today/ZyqOz

Reply on news.ycombinator.com