TCI Friday

It didn’t make sense at first glance, one bike, one rider, four legs. Then I got closer. There was a kid on the back, which explained why the rider, also a kid, was standing and working like a rented mule. School had just let out. Kids were streaming away in every direction, on foot, by bike, in cars. I’d timed my dash across town poorly.

But of course, it got me thinking, as seeing kids on bikes usually does.

I never got to ride my bike to school. We lived too far away, across too many multi-lane roads, with too few shoulders and very little in the way of sidewalk. I always envied the kids who lived closer and could ride their BMX bikes to the rickety bike rack, lock them there and then take off, at will, in the afternoon. More time to practice wheelies. More freedom from the dictates of the bus or the carpool.

Ironically, my kids have never ridden to school either, because we’ve always lived too close to the elementary, middle and high schools for it to make much sense. Location, location, they say.

I don’t have any numbers on this, but my sense is that the trend line isn’t great on kids commuting by bike. Some still do, obviously, but modern parents’ growing need for safety for their kids at all time and in all places, means only the more cavalier, or time constrained, parents encourage their kids to ride through town.

It wouldn’t really matter to me, except that I know that when kids don’t ride, they become adults who don’t ride. The traffic thickens. Car culture continues to dominate. But also, riding bikes was one of the purest, truest joys of my childhood. I feel sad that some kids might not have the opportunity to access that joy.

Anyway, this week’s TCI Friday wonders, did you ride to school when you were a kid? Do your kids?

Join the conversation
  1. alanm9 says

    Ironically, I was an actual bike commuter as a kid. My dad left for work at 4am and my mom didnt drive. I had a school job as an assistant crossing guard, keeping the little kids on the sidewalk until the real crossing guard stopped traffic to wave them on. So i had to be at school before anyone else, and thus the bike commute. Maybe thats why I’m a lifeling commuter as an adult, I dunno.

  2. aron says

    Me: Bussed for elementary (across town), walked for junior high (often carrying an instrument), and bus/car for high school (several towns away). Blame the baritone saxophone for my complete lack of bike commuting.

    Kid: Walked to elementary (four houses away; thanks, Arlington!). Home for 5th (2020-2021). Walked for 7th-8th (uphill both ways; thanks, Arlington!). Walk/bike for high school (walking on instrument days, biking on others — flatter, safer route than to the 7/8 middle school).

    As an adult, my commutes are often “not a car”, though there have been exceptions. I’ve tried everything: (infrequent) bus to subway, (frequent) bus to subway, bike to subway, bike into city (not-for-me years ago, but hey, times have changed and that new bike path completely changes things). I even owned a Vespa for a couple of years as an attempt to “hack the commute”. I’ve been working remotely for the past ~8 years and generally avoid the commute entirely. The current problem is forcing more activity into each day, since the regularly scheduled bike ride is gone.

  3. dr sweets says

    Yes and yes. I did up until high school when I transferred to a private school that was too far away. I continued to skate all through college, but riding took over as I finished up then into dental school. My oldest walked, rode bikes and skateboarded to school and now is doing the same around college. My youngest bikes to school often meeting other friends in the AM to join him just as I did.

  4. hmlh33 says

    I rode my bike the 3+ miles to elementary, then middle, then high school. I remember being underdressed in the morning and overdressed in the afternoon. I remember running late to middle school and time trialing hard to make it, only to then sit in a puddle of sweat thru first period (the girl behind me was not psyched about my smell and she let me know). I liked riding to and from school for the most part; two wheeled transport has always excited me. But then I turned 16 at the end of 10th grade and I got a car. This caused me to put the bike away for about 6 years; I always liked cars too. Mountain biking, as it gained popularity in the late 80’s brought me back. I’m so glad that it did.

    My kids don’t get to ride. We live too far and up too much of a hill for that. It’s a great place to live, but we didn’t choose it thinking about things like their ability to ride to school. Sometimes I wish we had. I’m sure that those to and from school miles had something to do affirming and cementing my love for the bike.

  5. rides in be says

    I commuted to grad school on the UBC campus in Vancouver. It was an amazing trip both ways through pacific spirit national park. Some days included detours through an exceptionally bike friendly city. All a gift and source of joy. I went back last year for continuing ed for two weeks with a drastically different route, that was also amazing. The biggest change in 20 years was the arrival of the e-bike; I got dusted on long hills by people who dressed to impress at work or in the classroom.

  6. khal spencer says

    We were DINKs, so no answer there.

    During my kid-dom, our house was on the outer edge of the district so I took the school bus as did everyone else. During high school, kids within the village were allowed by the school to walk or ride their bikes but we in the outer areas were mandated to get on the bus. But during warm months on weekends or after school, we would ride to the nearby elementary school, 3 miles away, or the high/middle school complex, 8 miles away, for pickup baseball games on the school fields or just to goof off as kids did in those days, prior to helicopter parents and laws criminalizing independent childhood.

    Anyway, that independent mobility involved riding on Walden Avenue or NY Rt 33, two high speed roads east of Buffalo, NY that nowadays would be called “too dangerous”. Thing is, no one ever got seriously hurt. The worst incident? My neighbor, Mark, once got blown over on the shoulder by a passing high speed eighteen wheeler and needed stitches in his forehead. When they removed the stitches, they found a couple small pebbles that apparently the doctor had not removed. Henceforth, Mark was the kid “with rocks in his head”.

    But yeah, due to a lot of things such as helicopter parenting, bad road design, increased traffic, plain old parent paranoia, and centralized school districts, the percent of kids biking to school has been dropping steadily since I was a kid back in the Paleolithic. That, as Emlyn says, is bad for the kid health as well as instilling bad habits for later life.
    https://www.colobikelaw.com/blog/why-dont-kids-ride-bikes-to-school-anymore.html

    P.S. Emlyn, would you prefer we use your birth name or “Robot” when referring to you.

  7. khal spencer says

    Gee, I forgot that for K, 1, and 2, I lived right in Buffalo (in fact, only a few blocks from where that mass shooter shot up the Topps Market on Jefferson Ave). Walked to school every day.

    When the state put in the Kensington Expressway, it created a huge excavation zone between us and school so we had to walk along a detour. But we kids used to cheat and run over the half-finished pedestrian bridge over the huge hole in the ground they dug to put in the below-ground highway. Teachers eventually stationed someone with binoculars to catch us and send us to the principal’s office for a stern lecture, which we ignored. Was too much fun to scoot over the construction zone.

  8. Maureen Gaffney says

    Love this thread. Haven’t thought about it in a long time even though spend career on some kind of bike/ped/trail-related thing or another. Walked to bus stop, sometimes rode bike to elementary, but it was kinda far on rural roads with no shoulder. 5 miles? No helmets. Ha. High school–needed to get to school–3 miles–then to the barn where I was a groom–one more girl in love with horses–3 more miles–then back home. Freedom!! Stopped when I got a car, of course, picked it up again when mtn bikes became a thing. Never went back. Definitely ride as an adult cause I rode as a kid, plus had siblings much older who did it too.

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