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The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

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Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#31

Post by sroussey »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #12
giarc wrote: post #4

I think this article misses the one big problem (as I understand it). It's that schools need to dismiss the kid to their parent. I have family in North Carolina and I understand that cars have the family number displayed, and someone with a radio communicates to the school staff "Car 315 is here", they then find that kid and dismiss them. Just do away with that. When the bell rings, send the kids outside and they wil…

The traffic is caused by vehicles queuing up in line, period. The system you describe isn't necessary to cause the traffic. It's not the root cause.

I’m across the street from a school and there is always one parent that parks in my condo building’s driveway and blocks it. It would be too much for them to be in the line!

Then sometimes, they leave their car and go in the school and we are trying to home or leave and they get angry with us!

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#32

Post by legitster »

Unfortunately we are one of those families.

The bus service is completely unreasonable. They shopped it out to the lowest bidder and the stops are all in terrible spots on busy streets. It also takes longer to sit and wait in the cold with a 6 year old than it would be to just drive there and back.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#34

Post by ryandrake »

technothrasher wrote: post #19
giarc wrote: post #4

I think this article misses the one big problem (as I understand it). It's that schools need to dismiss the kid to their parent. I have family in North Carolina and I understand that cars have the family number displayed, and someone with a radio communicates to the school staff "Car 315 is here", they then find that kid and dismiss them. Just do away with that. When the bell rings, send the kids outside and they wil…

Just letting the kids out en mass is how my son's school worked until Covid. Then they went to the call out the car as it arrives system as you describe, and they never went back. It is so much worse. Thankfully, my son drives himself to school now so I don't have to deal with it any longer.

I've never heard of this call-out system. It sounds like how you'd run a prison Our schools just open the doors and the kids run to the cars.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#35

Post by skyyler »

delichon wrote: post #3

We can just wait for this problem to go away as robocars becomes the norm. We'll look back on the primitive times when kids couldn't just click a button or whisper an instruction for a ride like anyone else.

We need busses.

If it has to be techy-flashy, would it satisfy you if the bus was self-driving?

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#37

Post by danielbln »

gizajob wrote: post #2

I looked at the author’s Google map view of the 2 miles they couldn’t walk to school, and the enormous grassed area next to the road would have meant I’d be walking that quite happily in the UK.

Yeah, this is much better than the numerous suburbs without sidewalks (such a weird thing from a European perspective) but that country road with ample green space left and right? It's fine. Would benefit from sidewalks and bike lane of course, but the author makes it sound like there is a steep cliff left and right of the road.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#38

Post by saghm »

technothrasher wrote: post #19
giarc wrote: post #4

I think this article misses the one big problem (as I understand it). It's that schools need to dismiss the kid to their parent. I have family in North Carolina and I understand that cars have the family number displayed, and someone with a radio communicates to the school staff "Car 315 is here", they then find that kid and dismiss them. Just do away with that. When the bell rings, send the kids outside and they wil…

Just letting the kids out en mass is how my son's school worked until Covid. Then they went to the call out the car as it arrives system as you describe, and they never went back. It is so much worse. Thankfully, my son drives himself to school now so I don't have to deal with it any longer.

Yeah, this seems like a pretty surprising omission from the article. In particular, it stuck out to me at this point:

> In fact, in 2022 only about 28% of US students used the school bus to get to school.1 Using the school bus is trending down, as shown in Chart I. In 1969, about 38% of students used the bus, similar to 2009 with 37.5%, and further dropping in 2017 to 36.5%.

In other words, for nearly half a century, the percentage of students taking the bus only fell by 1.5%, and then five years after that, it fell by an additional 8.5%. It _might_ not be covid, but clearly something became a factor between 2017 and 2022 that wasn't at least as far back to 1969, and I feel like it's the obvious hypothesis that would need to be addressed first.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#40

Post by JumpCrisscross »

giarc wrote: post #4

I think this article misses the one big problem (as I understand it). It's that schools need to dismiss the kid to their parent. I have family in North Carolina and I understand that cars have the family number displayed, and someone with a radio communicates to the school staff "Car 315 is here", they then find that kid and dismiss them. Just do away with that. When the bell rings, send the kids outside and they wil…

> schools need to dismiss the kid to their parent

Schools (EDIT: feel the) need to dismiss the kid to someone. That could be another parent, in the case of carpooling. It could be a bus driver. The root problem is parents chauffering their kids to and from school.

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