• nanook@friendica.eskimo.com
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    9 days ago

    @HiddenLayer555 This is a messed up era. When I was a kid from kindergarten and up I walked to school alone. It wasn’t a super long distance, about six blocks each way but it was unsupervised, and that was the norm back then. What has happened that it has become so dangerous that kids need to be bussed to school even if they’re three blocks from the school?

    • Crankenstein@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Car-centric society has made it damn near impossible to walk.

      Those six blocks you used to walk have all had their lanes widened into stroads, one converted into a thoroughfare, and no attention was given to pedestrian infrastructure so crosswalks, sidewalks or bike paths are almost non-existent unless you’re within 2 blocks of the school.

      We have literally built most of our cities, or redesigned older cities that used to be pedestrian friendly and walkable, into a wasteland of asphalt and concrete designed exclusively for personal vehicles.

            • ebolapie@lemmy.world
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              8 days ago

              That sounds expensive. How many roads have such bike lanes? Hypothetically, if you wanted to replace a trip to the grocery store, how useful would they be?

              • nanook@friendica.eskimo.com
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                8 days ago

                @ebolapie They aren’t. It’s hard carrying six bags of groceries on a bicycle and not going to waste time and energy going daily. Hypothetically it would get me within half a mile of a grocery store I don’t like, the one I do like is seven miles away.

                • ebolapie@lemmy.world
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                  8 days ago

                  Given the right bicycle it’s pretty easy, but that’s beside the point. The question is why don’t people use bike lanes that seem pretty nice on the surface of it, right? There has to be a reason other than “bikes suck and nobody wants to ride them,” because in some places people go everywhere on bicycles and they love it.

                  So what, really, is the main difference between those places and your town, if it’s not the quality of the bike lanes?

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      Have you been to an American school recently? The elementary next to my house could be confused for a prison at first glance. It hasn’t gotten bad, if anything it’s actually safer than when we went to school. They have promoted a society of individuals ruled by fear.