No Bike For You

It seems that students at Bridgewater-Raritan High School high school in Jersey raised $2,000 to pay for a new bike rack at their school. Sounds like a pretty good idea. Biking isn't for everyone, and it's not for every trip, but it's an appealing option for many trips and promoting biking reduces congestion and pollution while promoting public health and exercise. Indeed, the only problem with the "students raise $2,000 for a bike rack" story seems to me to be that this is the kind of thing a school district ought to be willing to shell out for (wouldn't build a suburban school with no car parking, would you).

But the school said no! Katherine Dransfield, who was trying to start a school bike club, explained that "Essentially what they told us was that they didn't want to promote biking as a way to get to school."

Comments

A $2000 bike rack? Is it from Tiffany?

Posted by sherifffruitfly | May 3, 2008 1:23 PM

Maybe the school was afraid that trial lawyers would bankrupt them if they encouraged kids to bike to school and one of the kids got hit by a car, or abducted, etc.

Posted by Fred | May 3, 2008 1:23 PM

I grew up in the suburbs. At the beginning of 3rd grade we were given a bike riding -safety test and, after we passed (everyone passed) we were permitted to ride to grade school. Almost everyone rode bikes and we loved it.

I returned to the school recently and the bike racks are gone.

Posted by jk | May 3, 2008 1:28 PM

Maybe the school is just run by stupid people... you know, people like Fred.

Posted by dbt | May 3, 2008 1:28 PM

I'm afraid Fred is probably right.

I realize that the right-wing "tort reform" is largely a sham, but I hope someday we can make this society less litigious, without screwing the little guy in the process.

Posted by Matt Stevens | May 3, 2008 1:31 PM

And obviously, OFF, the school has no problem with kids driving to school and getting into crashes. Troll harder, elderly bigot!

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 3, 2008 1:32 PM

I walked or biked to school all the way through college.

I guess they figure since this school is in a very rich district that everyone owns cars anyway.

Posted by guachi | May 3, 2008 1:36 PM

The school was probably deluged with angry morons going 'NO!!!!! People will abduct and rape my kids!!!!!'

Posted by soullite | May 3, 2008 1:38 PM

I'm with Fred. The lower school our kids went to in suburban D.C. had very strict rules about even walking a couple of blocks to school. Auto traffic in these areas is swift and dangerous to one and all. This is Jersey, after all.

Posted by Hedley Lamarr | May 3, 2008 1:39 PM

Hmmm. Why are you all piling on poor Fred? He's probably right about what's motivating the decisions of the school board and/or school administration. These people live in fear that they'll be held accountable for a lawsuit against the school. The school administration is just trying to cover their collective ass.

Posted by beowulf888 | May 3, 2008 1:40 PM

The approach to new school construction looks like an airport drop-off zones. Everything and I mean EVERYTHING is built around the car. Good for these kids for taking the initiative. The next initiative they should take is to take is move away from this suburb and never go back because it's filled with cowardly morons who spend their lifes in fear and in traffic.

Posted by joejoejoe | May 3, 2008 1:41 PM

Link?

Or is this original reporting?

Posted by Kolohe | May 3, 2008 1:53 PM

What of course is missing is the type of traffic located in and around the school district?

In some locations, biking could certainly be consider hazardous for anyone to undertake, particularly in busy areas were motorist go 40 MPH or faster.

Posted by me-again | May 3, 2008 1:59 PM

That would be awesome if Matt actually went to this school himself and talked to Dransfield personally to get her opinion. Even better if he biked there from DC!

Sucks that the school did this, but coming from a rural farmtown, I'm not that surprised. My high school was set off on its own couple-acre plot of land that had only car access from the highway, and few if anyone biked or walked even though the school wasn't that far from housing developments.

Posted by Ditko Hands | May 3, 2008 2:00 PM

I honestly thought Fred's comment was hilarious satire until I realized it probably wasn't.

More than the fear of lawsuits, though, the school administration is probably motivated by the obsessive need for authoritarian control that pervades (and has probably always pervaded) most American communities. High-school students who follow orders are rewarded; high-school students who assert themselves (even in ways as small as starting a bike club) are punished.

The other commenters on this thread either seem to have forgotten this basic principle, or they were lucky enough to have grown up in the vanishingly small fraction of the United States where local sentiment is more liberal.

Posted by James Gary | May 3, 2008 2:03 PM

What seems like a stupid decision is probably actually a safety concern. I leave near this school. Bridgewater is a very large town in west central new jersey. I would call it "rural-suburban" but as I will explain, the school is probably in the worst place possible to bike from the majority of housing developments in town.

The school is located literally in a triangle between State Highway 22 ( a 4 lane separated highway), US Rt. 287 (6 lane freeway) and US 78 (6 lane freeway). These roads cut most of the remainder of the town from a bicycle friendly way to get to school (of course, there are back roads and ways, but they are not direct). I suspect the school does not want to promote biking to school for this reason.

(As an aside, my wife graduated from this school and she says biking is not an easy option).

Posted by dan h | May 3, 2008 2:06 PM

What seems like a stupid decision is probably actually a safety concern. I leave near this school. Bridgewater is a very large town in west central new jersey. I would call it "rural-suburban" but as I will explain, the school is probably in the worst place possible to bike from the majority of housing developments in town.

The school is located literally in a triangle between State Highway 22 ( a 4 lane separated highway), US Rt. 287 (6 lane freeway) and US 78 (6 lane freeway). These roads cut most of the remainder of the town from a bicycle friendly way to get to school (of course, there are back roads and ways, but they are not direct). I suspect the school does not want to promote biking to school for this reason.

(As an aside, my wife graduated from this school and she says biking is not an easy option).

Posted by dan h | May 3, 2008 2:07 PM

I used to live not too far from there, and know my way around Bridgewater pretty well. The local paper says that the school is concerned about safety. And it's true that there are some busy roads in that area. US 22, 206, and I-287 all meet not too far.

Still, this should just illustrate that the planning of these suburban towns are really working against the wants and needs of their residents. All those main roads are so busy because they're crowded with strip malls and chain restaurants. There's no walkable town center, and these highways are not designed for pedestrian or bike traffic.

All that being said, I'm sure plenty of kids live in places where they won't have to go near those highways. Let them have the bike rack! And let the parents decide if it's safe for the kids to bike there. Like p. in nc said, it's not like it's extraordinarily safer to put those 17 year olds behind the wheel of their parents 2 ton SUV.

Posted by Mac | May 3, 2008 2:10 PM

I wonder how much each parking space made available to students costs...but these costs are never computed because we turn a blind eye to any auto-related costs.

As for whether or not there are safety concerns, forbidding the bike rack doesn't forbid biking - it just means kids will be locking their bikes to signposts, gas meters and flagpoles - or getting their bikes ripped off. It doesn't stop kids from riding their bikes, it just makes it more difficult.

Posted by McKingford | May 3, 2008 2:19 PM

The reason OFF is trolling is that little kneejerk reference to 'trial lawyers'. The culture of 'cars make us safe' and OMG TEH PERVERTZ! isn't some creation of the bar association. And there's the small knock-on that falling off one's bike might run up a hefty medical bill.

Let's be good capitalists about this, take the purchas of the bike rack as an indication of demand, and see if the free market can supply.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 3, 2008 2:22 PM

Link.

Posted by ogged | May 3, 2008 2:31 PM

Here's some actual reporting on this story, from the Newark Star-Ledger.

I biked to school most days in urban, high-traffic, Santa Monica, California 25 years ago; the school had a huge bike rack, which could hold hundreds of bikes and was filled up every day...

Posted by Alex R | May 3, 2008 2:33 PM

I wonder if it's more about control than the tort concerns (whether Fred's trolling or not, I COULD see an ill-informed school administrator letting his biases freak him out over tort liability).

I visited my old high school recently and I was amazed at how much of a prison it's become. All entrances and exits locked at all times, signed passes with photo ID needed to access the campus even after school hours, and (most relevantly) the giant locked, guarded gate at the parking lot to prevent kids from wandering off (or unauthorized people from coming in).

This bothered me a lot, but I can partly understand it. Obviously school safety has been a huge political issue for about ten years now, so school administrators seem to really want to keep a watchful eye on who is entering and leaving campus. But it's a lot harder to control the movement of bicycles than cars.

Posted by NS | May 3, 2008 2:39 PM

The chances of a school district being successfully sued for allowing kids to bike to school is essentially nil.

Posted by rea | May 3, 2008 2:41 PM

"it's not like it's extraordinarily safer to put those 17 year olds behind the wheel of their parents 2 ton SUV."

It actually is, for the driver. If there is an accident between a bike and a SUV (or a car), the car typically has scratched paint and the biker typically goes to the emergency room or the morgue.

"The reason OFF is trolling..."

Give it up, Pseudomonas. When you have to write an apologia for your first silly "troll" comment, you only highlight the puerility of your original accusation.

You also clearly don't understand the extent to which the threat of litigation shapes numerous aspects of daily life in suburban America; the school not wanting to fund the bike rack is just one example*

As for me being "elderly", not that it matters, but I'm in my 30s. Cheers.

Rea,

"The chances of a school district being successfully sued for allowing kids to bike to school is essentially nil."

Being unsuccessfully sued can be plenty expensive.

*One other example out of many that immediately comes to mind is the two big staple-shaped pieces of stainless steel you see at the edge of backyard in-ground pools: those are where the diving boards used to be, before the threat of lawsuits compelled homeowners to rip them out.

Posted by Fred | May 3, 2008 2:47 PM

As long as the students have to go from point A outside to point B inside the school, there would be a tort waiting to happen related to the means of getting to school. Kids getting hit by the bus. The bus getting hit by a truck. A car running down a kid in the parking lot. Etc.

Someone might be blaming the possibility of a tort, but there's another reason.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | May 3, 2008 2:52 PM

So if a high school kid gets killed/injured walking or driving to and from school the school is therefore open to litigation for 1) possessing sidewalks or 2) possessing a parking lot?

Yeah, um .... bullshit.

Excessive litigation sure provides a nice bogeyman cover for all sorts of ethically ugly political positions doesn't it?

In this case its a double standard, political prejudice against bike transportation due to fear that the next step will be the government taking their Chevy Suburban away.

Ironically this prejudice is also the reason why these same kids are getting blown up in Iraq instead.

Posted by Condor | May 3, 2008 2:52 PM

I agree with everyone that this seems pretty absurd and part and parcel of our national suburban paranoia that something BAD might happen... But, is this really common? Have any other schools gone out of their way to discourage biking to school? What makes this story stick out is the sheer bizarreness of it. If it is some kind of invisible trend, of which this story is a rare example of the otherwise stealthy issue becoming part of the public discourse, then I will become truly alarmed. But if it is just a weird one-off example of an over-cautious Principal doing something silly, then I'm less bothered by it (and quite heartened by the students' efforts).

Posted by RWB | May 3, 2008 3:02 PM

I don't know what the driving age is in NJ, but about half those students are too young to drive. Some wealthy parents still don't consider a car a right of passage--not all those of age have vehicles. In MA you can't give rides to friends for some period (though kids can drive younger siblings to soccer practice).

Refusing to provide a spot to leave bikes just seems needlessly obtuse. If they raised the money for the rack there's clearly a demand. Biking a slightly longer but safer route doesn't seem like a choice as unthinkable as this makes it out to be.

As for law suits--those would go against the driver, not the place with a bike rack. Come on.

Posted by Deborah | May 3, 2008 3:04 PM

Suburban idiocy and hysteria, if you ask me. They want to bike!!!

I checked the map, and indeed, routes 22, 206, and I-287 are nearby, but SO WHAT? You can safely bicycle 50 ft from an interstate, if there is some path or pavement, no less safely than 50 miles from an interstate.

The highschool in question is accessible by a street that has no-collision intersection with 287, and other intersections are either no-collision or with lights.

And there are north-south streets/roads with similar characteristics. I bet that they have either shoulders or sidewalks. Now, crossing a route like 202/206 while having a green light is not all that scary. Yes, people are sometimes killed while crossing busy streets on green, but it happens to drivers too, and the proper remedy is having improved signals, or actually demanding that people serve time after committing a vehicular homicide.

By the way, the "scary triangle" described by Dan contains a shopping mall, the school seems to be much more accessible than that. It is close to the shopping mall, but in no way enclosed by highways. It is the suburban idiocy "but, but, but, I would be scared to walk there...". I live in such an area, so I know a bit.

Of course, suburban idiocy extends to road engineering etc. For example, sidewalks are demanded where they are not needed and avoided where they would actually be useful, prohibitions on road crossings are posted "just in case", sometimes flanking the end of a beatifull sidewalk, at other times you have manual button for light change -- but you need to hop ever the guardrail to get to it, bikepaths are duly constructed, but usually "from nowhere to nowhere" etc.

Actually, New Jersey is quite progressive, and in this area, flat, so it is not that hard for bicyclists. I mean, they have shoulders and traffic lights, and I have seen sidewalks too.

Posted by piotr | May 3, 2008 3:05 PM

"One other example out of many that immediately comes to mind is the two big staple-shaped pieces of stainless steel you see at the edge of backyard in-ground pools: those are where the diving boards used to be, before the threat of lawsuits compelled homeowners to rip them out. "

I've never heard of that before. Could you please provide evidence that this is actually a current trend?

Posted by mad6798j | May 3, 2008 3:05 PM

Kolche,

That may be the funniest comment ever!

Original reporting"!

Yeah, right!

You don't get to be a fifteen year old blogger -- Iraq (pro then con), McCain (boo! hiss!), superhero movies (yay!), bikes (double yay!), the decline of newspapers (no biggie), etc.-- with a killer gig by anything as dull as actual reporting. This is a new century. You go to the right schools, make the right connections, take the right stance and, lo and behold, knowledge proves to be innate! Opinions follow!

Posted by Kids In America | May 3, 2008 3:06 PM

Kolche,

That may be the funniest comment ever!

Original reporting"!

Yeah, right!

You don't get to be a fifteen year old blogger -- Iraq (pro then con), McCain (boo! hiss!), superhero movies (yay!), bikes (double yay!), the decline of newspapers (no biggie), etc.-- with a killer gig by anything as dull as actual reporting. This is a new century. You go to the right schools, make the right connections, take the right stance and, lo and behold, knowledge proves to be innate! Opinions follow!

Posted by Kids In America | May 3, 2008 3:08 PM

For all my complaints about suburban idiocy, in my area the highschool can be accessed by a BS bike route that is separated from the traffic, and nearby has an intersection with EW bike route. The middle school that is closer to my house can be reached by a very nice bike route too.

But to get to the highschool from my place, one has to bike 1.5 mile on a twisty busy road with no shoulder. It is actually rather safe, because people drive carefully (on so obviously dangerous road), and I was biking there frequently. But it looks scary enough to scare mothers.

I also checked prices of bike racks. It seems that they cost between 50 and 150 dollars per slot for a bike, and the cheaper models must be cemented to the ground (they are not free-standing). So the project was for ca. 20 spots.

Posted by piotr | May 3, 2008 3:21 PM

Even granting, for the sake of argument, that a high school is difficult to access by bicycle, what sense does it make to design it that way? The driving age in NJ is 17, so it's not as though cars are particularly accessible to many people within high school age.

Posted by Tyro | May 3, 2008 3:39 PM

In the not-too-distant future, as gas sails past $20/gal, I suspect this sort of story will start seeming like a quaint anecdote from a bygone era; from the time before everyone HAD TO bike.

Posted by jimBOB | May 3, 2008 3:46 PM

I was going to suggest that perhaps the school was concerned about potential liability issues, only to see that a spirited discussion on that point was already underway.

Of course, should that in fact be a concern of the school's, I do not know why they could not simply say so outright. So maybe the school really is run by morons...

Posted by Roddy McCorley | May 3, 2008 4:21 PM

As others have mentioned, the demand is built in. The school could easily make parents sign waivers saying it is ok for their children to bike to school and they won't find the school responsible in case of an accident. If the reason for this is really fear of a lawsuit, part of me hopes the kids who raised the money sue just to fuck with their retarded principal.

Posted by Reality Man | May 3, 2008 4:26 PM

I teach HS science at a large suburban HS in Texas with about 2,000 students. It's a new school (built in 2003) and there are bike racks near all the student entrances to the school. However I rarely see more than one or two bikes in the racks...and they are usually BMX trick bikes rather than serious commuting bikes. By contrast, my HS in suburban Oregon had hundreds of bikes every day as most of the kids too young to drive and too close for the bus would bike. That was the early 80s. There were also dozens of motorcycles and scooters. I never see kids riding motorcycles or scooters anymore either.

Part of the problem is how many new high schools are located. The school I teach at is basically located on the edge of a large industrial park with narrow shoulderless streets that are crowded with trucks. On the main road to the school there is literally no shoulder. The pavement drops off steeply into drainage ditches. And there are at least 5 major trucking terminals in the area. I'm a serious cyclist and I would not want to fight the truck traffic getting to school, especially in the winter when it's still dark in the mornings.

Schools these days have MUCH larger footprints than they did 50 years ago. Look at the acreage taken up by the typical urban or 50s era suburban school. There will be some playing fields but basically fairly compact. Today's new mega high schools in the burbs take enormous acreage. The school I teach at as dedicated baseball, tennis, softball, soccer, and football stadiums in addition to acres and acres of practice fields. The parking lots are enormous. And the school itself is an enormous sprawling 2-story structure. The student body is about the same size as the 50s era school I attended in the 80s but I bet the acreage is more than double. The only places were such enormous schools can be built these days are big rural or industrial plots that aren't really going to be close to any neighborhoods.

In any event, more power to these kids. Maybe they'll force the state and municipality to better accommodate bicycles on the surrounding highways. That's probably more important than having bike racks.

Posted by Kent | May 3, 2008 4:31 PM

A: "it's not like it's extraordinarily safer to put those 17 year olds behind the wheel of their parents 2 ton SUV."

B: It actually is, for the driver. If there is an accident between a bike and a SUV (or a car), the car typically has scratched paint and the biker typically goes to the emergency room or the morgue.

B would be correct if a typical obstacle faced by an SUV would a a bike. This may be true in The Netherlands (were gasoline is 9 dollars per gallon), but not in USA. SUV drivers kill themselves by hitting fixed obstacles, and the rigid frames make such collision more dangerous than in collapsible sedan, in which the entire front basically works like a spring that decreases the impact. SUVs also go off-road when bumping into guardrails. In bad weather, SUV drivers often have false feeling of safety and crash.

Young people sometimes get VERY STRANGE IDEAS while driving. I went once on a winter hike, and we have seen a couple checking on an upside-down car. Their son wanted to ski, and the ski slope was not opened yet, so he decided to check a mountain road (on which we hiked down, with considerable difficulty). It was after an ice storm, on an "Enter at your own risk" road, and walking, we were falling down at least once a minute. At some point it dawned on the young man that driving on hard ice is not overly safe, but as he tried to make a U-turn, his car slid off road. It was zero speed, and trees stopped him 10 ft below the road (although the car was upside down).

Posted by piotr | May 3, 2008 4:49 PM

The problem with the youth of today is that they're always refusing to drive in cars. All these healthy, eco-friendly bikes are destroying America's future.

Posted by Angry Sam | May 3, 2008 5:25 PM

Look what happened in Amsterdam.

I believe it's the direct pressure of a bicycle seat upon the male genitalia that turns one Yurpeen. Too many more bike racks at American high schools and we'll all be speaking French and drinking tiny cups of coffee.

Posted by Alan in SF | May 3, 2008 5:58 PM

Maybe the school was afraid that trial lawyers would bankrupt them if they encouraged kids to bike to school and one of the kids got hit by a car, or abducted, etc.
Posted by Fred

I'm afraid Fred is more right than wrong. Schools these days are scared as hell about lost careers if the ACLU comes in with Jewish litigants "offended" and suing like crazy if the schools put too much Christ in Christmas.
Part of what is driving the successful effort of Food and Safety Nazis to ban soda, candy in favor of "nutritious" hi-cal high-fructose syrup "juice drinks" is litigation fears. Presence of Diet Coke and Classic in machines is "official city endorsement". Getting rid of the stuff and having all sorts of "zero tolerance" for stray butter knives and such is lifetime bureaucrats way of shielding their careers from judicial consent decrees that would have administrator's heads rolling.

Bikes are no different. Legally, with schools in "in loco parentis" status, any official endorsement of anything "less safe" than status quo without a ream of legal waiver papers and parental consent makes the town liable if a tort lawyer comes in asking for millions on a wrongful death on bike or serious injury on bike lawsuit. Any ACTIVE participation of the state, through it's agency the school, like buying the bike rack, or holding a charity event so poorer kids can afford to ride a bike to school until one gets squashed by a semi-trailer - becomes a damning event in tort action. It establishes and fixes complicity in unsafe practices.(biking more dangerous than riding fat & happy in gas-guzzling big yellow school buses.) Best not to have any state or school endorsement!

(Our town just went through the great lawyer-driven school lunchbag witch hunt on concerns that some lunchbags made in China had LEAD in them. They were BANNED from school. Even the ones the parents had found were lead-free or who determined that the minute traces didn't matter since all the food was wrapped up anyways..)

Posted by chris ford | May 3, 2008 6:04 PM

I agree that sometimes the lawsuit aversion goes bonkers, but I still think that the "support of bicycling" lawsuit is highly imaginary if not outright impossible.

I know only one case of death in a traffic accident that lead to a lawsuit against a party that caused a dangerous commute: a shopping mall that lobbied, successfully, the municipality against a direct bus line from a minority part of town, and then a Black girl was killed when she was crossing the street to get to the mall. (Her bus was stopping across the street, but to get to the mall, she would need to go to downtown, change, ride again, for at least 30 more minutes). The pedestrian crossing was awful as well, and apparently, purposefullly.

Parents have implicit power over the choice of transportation that their children take, plus school districts offers bus transportation in any case. Teens kill themselves routinely in car accidents, and no school liability was ever though about, in spite of providing parking spaces. As buses are safer, this parking is not the safest "loco parentis" decision.

Posted by piotr | May 3, 2008 6:57 PM

Guide to conservative answers to policy stupidity:

(a) Blame the trial lawyers for causing this situation

Doesn't quite work? Ok...

(b) then it's the fault of liberal policies that were implemented over conservatives' objections, producing this result, even though conservatives don't necessarily want to change that result.

If that fails, move on to

(c) Actually, Americans prefer this state of things, and it's part of our Way of Life, and if you disagree or even want other people to have access to options of doing something else, then you're an elitist who's out of touch with Americans.

Posted by Tyro | May 3, 2008 7:08 PM

A huge pet peeve of mine is idiots who bring up an imaginary threat of lawsuits. Guess what, this country is not as litigious as some imagine. Most of the silly actions that are taken in reaction to lawsuits, are really actions taken in reaction to imaginary lawsuits. Everytime people talk about these lawsuits like they are real, other people do stupid things to protect themselves from non-existant lawsuits.

This school would not get sued becuase they had bike racks if a kid got killed on the way to school anymore then they would if a kid got killed in a car and the school had parking spaces. If someone did sue, it would be thrown out so quickly.

Posted by nathaniel | May 3, 2008 7:28 PM

Please distinguish concerns for student's safety from litigation worries. I doubt any school district has ever been sued for an off premises commuting accident. But any principal who's been in the business a few years has been to a few student funerals, counselled their friends, and ordered the block boxes around the yearbook pictures. That stuff all sucks whether or not anyone is at fault or anyone is sued. Keeping students as safe as possible is both part of the job and part of being human. Litigation fears have nothing to do with it.

Posted by old guy | May 3, 2008 7:31 PM

I'm with nathaniel. If schools could be sued for things that happened to people coming and going on bicycles, they would certainly be sued for the dumb things kids do coming and going in cars. To a high school kid a car is just a do-it-yourself get-stoned-and-pregnant kit.

You can see what makes James Kunstler shrill. The kids here are smarter than the adults and the adults are trying to drag the kids down to their own level.

Which, oddly enough, sounds exactly like the administration of the high school I went to- but even dumber.

Posted by serial catowner | May 3, 2008 7:46 PM

"I'm afraid Fred is more right than wrong. Schools these days are scared as hell about lost careers if the ACLU comes in with Jewish litigants "offended" and suing like crazy if the schools put too much Christ in Christmas."

The odds of a litigant who sues over Christian imagery being Jewish (albeit probably an athiest or agnostic Jew whose real religion is leftism) are fairly high, I'm afraid, but that's not necessarily the case with the sort of lawsuit a school might expect from the parents of a student biker who got run over on the way to school. NJ has at least as many Italian Catholic slip & fall attorneys as it has Jewish ones; probably more, in fact, as Jewish attorneys are more likely to work higher levels of the profession.

"Litigation fears have nothing to do with it."

Of course they do, though you are right that legitimate safety concerns do play a role as well. Most New Jerseyans drive like assholes.

Posted by Fred | May 3, 2008 7:54 PM

When will our country create a 21st century transportation system? We are 40 years behind the rest of the world. The fact everyone has to get in a gas guzzler just to get a glass of milk is a major problem that contributes to our country's massive debt (think about it-- all that money goes directly to Venezuela or the Middle East). When gas hits $8-10 per gallon next year, the situation will be even worse.

Posted by DesignNewHaven | May 3, 2008 9:10 PM

The lower school our kids went to in suburban D.C. had very strict rules about even walking a couple of blocks to school.

Can schools really dictate how students arrive at campus? I don't see why, and if they try, they should be sued. They can offer busing, but beyond that, it's the responsibility of the parents to decide what is an acceptable means of transportation.

One other example out of many that immediately comes to mind is the two big staple-shaped pieces of stainless steel you see at the edge of backyard in-ground pools: those are where the diving boards used to be, before the threat of lawsuits compelled homeowners to rip them out.

It's not so much homeowners as public swimming pools, hotels, etc. Thirty years ago, it seemed that nearly every pool had a diving board. It makes me happy to see one today. It's like getting a glimpse of an endangered bird flying by.

Posted by Just Karl | May 3, 2008 9:42 PM

Anyone who thinks that kids are safer in SUVs than bikes really doesn't understand kids.

The high school I teach at seems to have at least one fiery vehicle accident/year. Last fall it was 7 kids in a pickup rollover accident.

In fact, the school closed their previously open campus due to auto fatalities. The school used to have a longer lunch and open campus. The game among kids who had cars was to see who could reach the farthest point from school during lunch, get a receipt as proof, and make it back in time for class. Kids were driving 30-40 miles away at lunch, sprinting into a 7-11 for a receipt, and racing back to school. Until 4 died in a high-speed vehicle crash.

In any event, it isn't just the schools that need to accommodate bikes. Really, the entire transportation infrastructure really needs to be reworked to accommodate more than single occupancy vehicles. And that's a generational project.

Posted by Kent | May 3, 2008 9:54 PM

You mean the kids stepped away from the X-box long enough to raise money to improve their school, and wanted to promote healthy and environmentally responsible lifestyles? Of course they had to shut that down, they're there to learn math (although they probably don't), not how to be hippies.

Posted by aleks | May 3, 2008 11:40 PM

I don't care if the roads surrounding this school are straight out of Mad Max and the kids have to contend with Lord Humongous and friends each and every day on the way to 1st period. People die from heart disease too and actually using a form of transportation that is also exercise most certainly saves lives in the aggregate. The people making this decision at the school are chickenshit bureaucrats who suck eggs.

Posted by joejoejoe | May 4, 2008 12:00 AM

Petty tyrants.

And for the record: I biked to school back in the day; I've gotten into wrecks with my bike on the way to school; and I'm trained in the dark arts of trial advocacy. In my humble opinion, there can be no credible legal fear behind discouraging biking as a way to get to school unless the school grounds are unsafe for bicycles. These administrators are petty tyrants.

Props to sherifffruitfly for winning the thread on the very first post.

Posted by southpaw | May 4, 2008 12:37 AM

Take a look at the area surrounding the school on Google Earth.
It offers a good example of why non-grid cul-de-sac development is so impractical.
School address:
600 Garretson Rd
Bridgewater, NJ 08807

Posted by David Sucher | May 4, 2008 12:42 AM

One downside to letting kids bike to school that I hadn't seen mentioned here: weather. If it's raining, or, if you live in Minnesota like I do, snowing most of the school year, bikes are pretty useless.

Hard to get completely away from cars...

Posted by epiphany lou | May 4, 2008 2:41 AM

"he fact everyone has to get in a gas guzzler just to get a glass of milk is a major problem that contributes to our country's massive debt"

No it doesn't. The federal debt comes from spending more (mainly on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security) than we take in taxes. Pretty simple. Spending more on oil (and importing 60% of it) does increase our trade deficit though. Good thing Congressional Dems want to keep ANWR and 80% of the outer continental shelf off limits to domestic energy exploration and extraction. Honestly, it seems that Brazil's elementary school-educated lefty president Lula is smarter than all of America's Democrats when it comes to energy policy. His country just struck the mother-lode -- twice! -- off the coast of Rio de Janeiro. Can you imagine what he'd say if the Brazilian version of Ted Kennedy told him that he shouldn't explore for oil in Brazil's on territory? "Ridículo!"

"It's not so much homeowners as public swimming pools, hotels, etc."

When my parents bought a small farm house that came with a pool, the first thing they did was rip out the diving board, on advice of their attorney who handled the closing. For some reason, the slide was OK to keep.

Posted by Fred | May 4, 2008 3:01 AM

Look how Fred dishonestly includes Social Security in the group of things that are spending more than they take in - in fact, it is likely that none of the programs Fred stupidly cites are over their intake.

No you mindless reciter of GOP talking points, Social Security has been taking in more money than it has been putting out for over two decades. In fact, without the massive overtaxation of the working class the annual deficit run up by Republican spending on killing people would be much more obvious.

The fact is, the real debt comes in the form of massively wasteful programs like the US military - which takes up somewhere in the neighborhood of half of the discretionary budget.

But in order to understand these things Fred would have to be arguing in good faith. As a conservative that's something he simply cannot allow. Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Bush have clearly demonstrated that conservatism doesn't work. So its proponents are reduced to simply lying to make their points.

Posted by Circus Freak | May 4, 2008 3:39 AM

I grew up in Long Beach, CA during the 1980s, and I'm trying to think back to the different schools I went to, all in different parts of town, and I don't recall anybody biking to school at the time. I don't recall it being an issue either way, it's just something hardly anybody did. There were bike racks.

From what I recall, though, the concern was not so much being hit by cars, but getting your bike stolen.

Posted by Adam Villani | May 4, 2008 4:10 AM

"No you mindless reciter of GOP talking points, Social Security has been taking in more money than it has been putting out for over two decades."

Right, and where has that surplus been going? Into Treasury bonds. And what are Treasury bonds? Pieces of the national debt.

Posted by Fred | May 4, 2008 4:25 AM

Re: If it's raining, or, if you live in Minnesota like I do, snowing most of the school year, bikes are pretty useless.

I grew up in Michigan, not exactly noted for palm trees and sunshine. I rode extensively. Biking season began in March and some years lasted well into November. One rather mild fall I rode almost up to Christmas. During warm spells I could ride a day or two even in January and February.

Posted by JonF | May 4, 2008 7:27 AM

old guy,

If you google bicycle schools lawsuits, you will see that several schools and cities have been sued concerning bicycle accidents. A public school that permits bicycling to school assume the liablity of ensuring that all of the bicycle paths, road crossings, and traffic patterns are built to ensure that they are safe for bicycle riders. It appears that the standard for bicycle safety is much higher than for automobile safety.

Any school that encourages bicycle riding will probably be sued for any accident on campus or occuring on any bike path, crossing, or sidewalk near the school.

Posted by superdestroyer | May 4, 2008 8:17 AM

Via Streetsblog:

As an actual student of this school, I would like to point out something. At the times when students are entering and exiting the school, traffic is at its most congested. With 2800 students coming and going at once on one road, the average speed is roughly 5 mph for the entire stretch of roadway and the turns surrounding it. Is traffic this slow, and often stopped completely, really so unsafe to bicycle in?

Comment by Mike — May 2, 2008 @ 6:36 pm | Link | Edit This

Posted by Aaron | May 4, 2008 12:34 PM

"If you google bicycle schools lawsuits, you will see that several schools and cities have been sued concerning bicycle accidents."

superdostroyer,

I did that and couldn't come up with anything involving somebody commuting to school on a bike, getting hurt and then suing the school. Please provide direct links to the cases, and if possible what happened to them

Posted by JordanT | May 4, 2008 4:22 PM

I'm with Fred. The lower school our kids went to in suburban D.C. had very strict rules about even walking a couple of blocks to school.

This is ridiculous. I walked to school, from 1st grade on. What, exactly, is going to happen if someone violates that rule and walks to school? Is the school going to suspend the kid? Expel him? Declare him a ward of the state?

You wonder if there's any aspect of child development with respect to which a school administrator ever says "you know, that's none of my business".

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 4, 2008 8:51 PM

Fred:

We should explore for more oil. I support drilling in ANWR and off the California and Florida coasts (where Republicans are stopping it). I also support Bush's initiative to build refineries. But your side needs to be realistic about how much oil will be found by drilling. We can't really achieve energy independence without conservation and production.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 4, 2008 9:10 PM

Dilan Esper,

You are right that Republican governors in FL and CA have been opposed to further exploration off of their coasts. I'm not sure that the goal of total energy independence is realistic, or necessary. But we could certainly reduce the cost of energy for ourselves, reduce our trade deficit, increase government royalty revenues, and create hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs by increasing our own energy production.

Posted by Fred | May 4, 2008 9:43 PM

Fred:

Fine, but even there, production only gets you so far. The only energy strategies that make sense are comprehensive, i.e., we do more exploration, do more refining, and also conserve. Not only does that reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but it also cuts down on greenhouse gases and pollution.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 4, 2008 10:05 PM

This is sad to me.
My Bike Route to school

That's basically the route I rode to school each day for a year. After 2 classes at that HS, I'd ride back half way to my full-time high school (only went to the other to continue studying Russian.)

I want more people to have that type of opportunity. My 10mile bike ride (one-way) was worth it every day I could take it (and I rarely couldn't, as I had studded snow tires for my bike in winter I could swap to.)

(FYI points B-C isn't what I did, you can clearly see the bike path connecting them.)

I want to go back there, and see if 15 years later its still easily cycled.

Posted by Evinfuilt | May 5, 2008 12:06 PM

Everyone should check out http://detentionslip.org for more stories about what's wrong in our public schools. It's a leader for crazy headlines in education.

Posted by sweetchuckd | May 5, 2008 8:51 PM

Everyone should check out http://detentionslip.org for more stories about what's wrong in our public schools. It's a leader for crazy headlines in education.

Posted by sweetchuckd | May 5, 2008 8:55 PM