School Busing - Maybe a mistake? - So what could be better?

In 1950, all our kids on PEI walked to a local school. The 1904 school act said that no child should walk more than 4 miles each way! 

Today every child on PEI is bused to school right from their front door. The longest walk they get is maybe 30 feet each side. 

We know that one of the reasons why kids and people in cities are thinner is that the design of cities helps us decide to walk a lot more. It gets our ACTIVITY up.  

Is busing all kids to school such a great idea? In most cities, kids use public transport to get to and from school. 

"Silly Rob!" I can hear you say "We don't have a viable bus system here in Charlottetown. Too few routes, too few buses."

Yes you are right. BUT what if we shifted our urban school buses into the metro system - including Cornwall and Stratford? We would then get the buses and the routes and the frequency. What if these buses worked all day and part of the night and passed by the schools as a matter of course? 

What if the older kids used the bus system that we all used?

What might happen? Would we all get a better system just as gas prices shoot up? Would kids now also have a system to get from A to B without their parents or a second or third car?

"But Rob, the safety issue?" Oh of course silly me - kids are being kidnapped every day in London, Paris and New York. So bus the younger kids - and start with junior high. We have to street proof kids anyway.

We would get a much better bus system just as we all need it for not much more money - for we spend a lot on the school buses too. 

Will we be able to afford to bus all the kids anyway? We will all be able to afford 2-3 cars as we do now? For now after school we have to drive tham all over the place or they get a cheap car - no such thing. 

And as a health issue - can we afford to have so many obese kids? I am not blue skying this - this is a trend.

There is a trend toward this

In the U.S., 42% of kids walked or biked to school compared with just 16.2% in 2001, based on a prior study.

Walking or biking to school adds to the physical activity kids get each day and may help prevent excess weight gain, both in childhood and later into adulthood, helping to prevent chronic disease, Pabayo's group noted.

"These findings can be useful for public health practitioners because it allows for the identification of populations who are the least likely to use active transportation to school, who can then be targeted for intervention," they wrote in the paper.

Their analysis of the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth followed 7,690 children at an average age of 8 attending public schools from 1996-1997 through three waves of interviews with caregivers to 2001"