How much must gasoline cost before parents will let their kid's walkor bicycle 150-300' to school?

[John Thompson]

On 2007-06-12, Cathy Kearns <[email protected]> wrote:

> I've thrown many a hissy fit over lockers, so my children's schools have
> them. The last one I didn't fight was just because I was too tired. The
> high school does not give lockers to seniors, as they assume they will
> drive.:-(

What does driving have to do with school lockers?

--

John ([email protected])

 

[SMS]

John Thompson wrote:
> On 2007-06-12, Cathy Kearns <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I've thrown many a hissy fit over lockers, so my children's schools have
>> them. The last one I didn't fight was just because I was too tired. The
>> high school does not give lockers to seniors, as they assume they will
>> drive.:-(
>
> What does driving have to do with school lockers?

A lot as it turns out.

One of the reasons kids want to be driven to school is because of the
insanely heavy backpacks they must carry, along with stuff like sports
equipment, musical instruments, etc. With lockers, they would have a lot
lighter load.

I'm especially impressed with one kid that carries his trombone on his
bike, on a specially modified rear rack.

During a recent city council meeting in my city, it was pointed out that
Al Gore's movie actually had a bigger effect in getting kids to walk or
bicycle to school than did all the begging and pleading of the schools
to the parents.

-Safe route to school
-No heavy loads (schools provide lockers)
-Secure bike parking

At my daughter's middle school, which just opened in 2005, they didn't
expect a lot of kids to bicycle to school, and didn't have enough bike
parking. They quickly had to construct another secure bike parking area
to accommodate all the bicycles.

 

[Cathy Kearns]

"SMS" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> John Thompson wrote:
>> On 2007-06-12, Cathy Kearns <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> I've thrown many a hissy fit over lockers, so my children's schools have
>>> them. The last one I didn't fight was just because I was too tired.
>>> The high school does not give lockers to seniors, as they assume they
>>> will drive.:-(
>>
>> What does driving have to do with school lockers?
>
> A lot as it turns out.
>
> One of the reasons kids want to be driven to school is because of the
> insanely heavy backpacks they must carry, along with stuff like sports
> equipment, musical instruments, etc. With lockers, they would have a lot
> lighter load.

They also assume they use their car trunk as their locker. So in between
classes they can run to the parking lot to get stuff. If you walk or bring
a bike you have to carry everything with you all day, since you don't have a
locker.

 

[Mike Kruger]

Mike Jacoubowsky wrote:
>
> The price of gas will have little effect on such behavior. It could
> go to $6/gallon and they'll cut back on long trips and only use the
> car for the most-wasteful of things, the short trips that could
> easily be avoided altogether or at least consolidated.

In support of this, note that gas consumption was up in April and May over
last year in the US, despite the high prices.

 

[[email protected]]

On Jun 10, 9:30 am, Matt O'Toole <[email protected]> wrote:


> This also meshes with other statistics on bike vs. auto use --
> that driving is 2-3 times more dangerous than cycling.

Driving is definitely not '2-3 times more dangerous than cycling,'
whatever that means. Driving may be more _deadly_ on a per-hour or per-
mile basis but I don't believe this has been shown with any reliable
evidence. What has been shown repeatedly is that cycling is far, far
more likely to result in injury on a per-hour or per-mile basis than
is driving, and that child bicyclists have far worse accident rates
than adult bicyclists. Stat-mongering is not going to be a winning
strategy for getting parents to let their kids ride bikes to school.

Robert