Is the "school run" a uniquely British phenomenon? And, if so, what should we be doing about it?

[Bikeman78]

There are lots of non-compliant coaches, and many school buses are operated by these. If they are non-compliant, they cannot be used by any passenger paying a separate fare, which includes 'spare seats' sold by the Local Authority.

It doesn't have to be 'normal passengers' - a school child paying (by whatever means) requires a compliant vehicle to be operated.

This poses more questions than it answers. How do kids that cannot access the inaccessible coach get to school? I'm also surprised that there are so many inaccessible coaches still on the road. When were they built? What are they used for, apart from school runs?

 

[Bletchleyite]

This poses more questions than it answers. How do kids that cannot access the inaccessible coach get to school?

By accessible taxi, or an accessible coach is operated on the route they need. It's all pre-booked, so you know what the requirements are. You can't walk up and buy a ticket even as a schoolchild - as noted above that would require an accessible vehicle regardless.

I'm also surprised that there are so many inaccessible coaches still on the road. When were they built? What are they used for, apart from school runs?

Tourist and other private hire travel. If you hire a coach it doesn't need to be accessible unless you have the need to hire an accessible coach because you have a wheelchair user to transport, and it might be more economic to provide for them in another way e.g. a taxi.

 

[GatwickDepress]

Here in the USA they all get on those famous yellow buses. I never see parents taking kids to school in the car. When I was group, first it was my bicycle then two buses to get to my grammar school. School runs definitely came well after my time and seem fairly unique to the UK.

A lot of pupils in America are driven to school these days. The Atlantic has a very brief navel-gazing article about it here, but the pertinent quote is below:

A few generations ago, in 1969, nearly one in two kids walked or biked to school. Now only about one in 10 kids gets to school those ways. And only about a third of children who live within just one mile of school walk or bike there. School buses—a onetime rite of passage for American children—have been supplanted as the leading vehicle for getting kids to school. According to the most recent national data, a solid majority of kids—54 percent—are driven to school.

I believe one major factor between the British and American experiences comes down to infrastructure. Outside of dense urban areas, your typical American school is going to be built on large plots with room to build parental drop-off zones - like this school in Florida, which also has a large staging are for school buses.

Meanwhile, your average British school is going to be on a fairly small plot of land on very low density streets with barely enough room for a staff car park let alone a drop-off area. Throw in a complete lack of any enforcement of traffic laws and it's no wonder the school rush is such a nightmare in Britain with all that traffic.

 

[ABB125]

This poses more questions than it answers. How do kids that cannot access the inaccessible coach get to school? I'm also surprised that there are so many inaccessible coaches still on the road. When were they built? What are they used for, apart from school runs?

There are loads of old coaches owned by independent (ie: not First/Stagecoach etc) operators. These are used for the school trip/OAP holiday etc market, for which they don't need to be accessible - alternative provision can easily be arranged for those who have access requirements.
These coaches are also used for local authority school contracts - services paid for by the council, purely to transport children to/from school, at the times appropriate to the school. In my case (South Worcestershire, which still uses the 3-tier school system), school start times were arranged pretty much entirely to allow efficient use of the contract coaches. For example, the middle school I went to started at something like 0820, and the high school at 0905. This allowed vehicles to do one load to the middle school (which is located in one of the villages), then go back out to collect a different set of children and take them to the high school (in the nearby town). Repeat the process in the afternoon.
The local public bus service timetable (one route, hourly(ish)) was also designed pretty much entirely around serving both schools at appropriate times, as some children used the service (with passes provided by the council).

Personally, I had (in the 6 years of travelling on school contract coaches) pretty much everything you can imagine, from an early 1980s Volvo B10M chassis to brand new vehicles. Mostly we had coaches from probably the 2000s. Occasionally a bus would be used instead. On one occasion, we had the operator's "luxury" vehicle, with leather seating in bays of 4! It was great for someone who was mildly interested in the vehicles used

However, that's just what happened where I grew up, in a reasonably rural area. (Not properly rural or remote like mid-Wales or something, but not built up either. Edge of the Cotswolds.) I have no experience of more urban areas.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

A lot of pupils in America are driven to school these days. The Atlantic has a very brief navel-gazing article about it here, but the pertinent quote is below:

I believe one major factor between the British and American experiences comes down to infrastructure. Outside of dense urban areas, your typical American school is going to be built on large plots with room to build parental drop-off zones - like this school in Florida, which also has a large staging are for school buses.

Meanwhile, your average British school is going to be on a fairly small plot of land on very low density streets with barely enough room for a staff car park let alone a drop-off area. Throw in a complete lack of any enforcement of traffic laws and it's no wonder the school rush is such a nightmare in Britain with all that traffic.

Yes. That makes sense. Comes down to geography I guess.

 

[renegademaster]

skinny wheeled road bikes on bad quality British roads

The only thing narrow wheeled Road bikes really struggle with is wet gravel/dirt surfaces. Road bikes have larger diameter wheels which come in more useful for staying upright over potholes

 

[Ediswan]

The only thing narrow wheeled Road bikes really struggle with is wet gravel/dirt surfaces. Road bikes have larger diameter wheels which come in more useful for staying upright over potholes

I agree about gravel/dirt. Never had particular problems in the wet. That includes on 23mm tyres.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Road bikes have larger diameter wheels which come in more useful for staying upright over potholes

This isn't true any more. Almost all bikes have 700c (28") wheels, the 26" MTB wheel isn't a thing any more. Some MTBs even use 29" wheels. The only exception seems to be childrens' bikes, folders, hire bikes and e-cargo bikes.

The risk of pinch flats is fairly high on narrow tyres, particularly if you're heavy. If you like drops, gravel bikes or tourers are probably more practical on bad quality road surfaces.

 

[Krokodil]

The only thing narrow wheeled Road bikes really struggle with is wet gravel/dirt surfaces. Road bikes have larger diameter wheels which come in more useful for staying upright over potholes

Or sand. The coastal cycle path near here often has issues following storms.

 

[markle]

The Terns are excellent e-cargo bicycles, but the price (around £6K) is eye-watering - certainly a similar price at which a reasonable second-hand small car can be purchased. I assume they must have some sort of patent on the design, because unlike every other type of bicycle going nobody seems to have done a clone at a more reasonable price quite as well - there are other longtail, small wheel cargo cycles, but none of them seem to have quite as good a design, which on the face of it would seem easy to copy unless something is legally preventing that.

Of course that renders them very much a "champagne socialist" purchase. Which is fine in itself, but until you get well below £2K you're not going to sell them to the masses. And, importantly, until you make cycling properly safe, with Dutch style segregation and more 20mph (and ideally allow e-bike assist up to 20 so all traffic rides together where it isn't segregated).

One point that hasn't been mentioned - you can use Cycle Scheme to cut the price of the Tern by 28-42% through salary sacrifice. That gets you down to 12 monthly payments of around £350 for a GSD, or you could go for their new, cheaper Quickhaul for just over £200 a month.

Plenty of people - on wide ranging incomes - spend that much on car finance each month. It strikes me as a bit odd to suggest that someone spending an equivalent amount on a cargo bike - especially one intended to be a car substitute - is somehow "champagne socialism"

 

[D1537]

This poses more questions than it answers. How do kids that cannot access the inaccessible coach get to school? I'm also surprised that there are so many inaccessible coaches still on the road. When were they built? What are they used for, apart from school runs?

The school that I teach at uses taxis (for rural students further away) and a school minibus (for local students) to pick up those that cannot use the coaches (which are all non-PRM compliant, and some are quite new).

 

[Bletchleyite]

Plenty of people - on wide ranging incomes - spend that much on car finance each month. It strikes me as a bit odd to suggest that someone spending an equivalent amount on a cargo bike - especially one intended to be a car substitute - is somehow "champagne socialism"

Because, aside from if you live in central London, a car is MUCH more useful than a bicycle.

 

[markle]

Because, aside from if you live in central London, a car is MUCH more useful than a bicycle.

In theory, yes.

In practice in many households with two or more cars, one is often used as a little run around for local trips or the school run. Perfectly reasonable / viable to replace that with a bike, and no more a luxurious expenditure than maintaining a car.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

It’s not just central London. Certainly in Oxford, a GSD will get you anywhere within the ring road quicker and with less stress than a car will, and I’m sure that’s true for some other places too. Even out here in little Charlbury I prefer the GSD because I don’t have to spend 10 minutes driving around to find somewhere to park it.

 

[miklcct]

School runs also happen in Hong Kong, especially in areas with private schools as well. Some schools have already banned this practice by making the use of school buses compulsory.

 

[redreni]

Making cycling much safer could potentially make some inroads, particularly for junior age up. Remember the Netherlands is fairly low density too.

I suspect it would all but eradicate the problem. I can't imagine parents like sitting in the enormous traffic jams they've helped cause in order to take their child to school. They just don't see a better option. They don't want their kid run over by another kid's mum or dad.

I have deliberately avoided commenting on this so far because education for 11-16s and 16-18s in the Cambridge area is so unusual. This anecdote doesn't surprise me at all.

There is under-provision of education in the state sector for 11-16s in Cambridge itself, and a large number of Village Colleges, the oldest of which were established almost 100 years ago. For 11-16s there is a net outflow of students from the urban area to the villages, especially as the Village Colleges generally have better reputations than the schools in the urban area that started life as secondary moderns. Academic specialisation at schools for 11-16s has also contributed to students making longer journeys.

The reverse then happens at 16-18, with students travelling long distances into Cambridge to the two big 6th form colleges, which trace their history back to the County High Schools. There is also a huge amount of student travel to and from the Cambridge Regional College.

Cambridge also has a thriving private sector, with the Leys and the Perse at its apex, but lots of others too.

Take all these together and the school run is the biggest single contributor to traffic congestion in Cambridge.

My nieces live in one of the villages that has a Village College and have always walked to school. The eldest has just started sixth form college and there was much debate as to whether it would be safe for her to cycle from said village along the main road towards Cambridge, to the sixth form college. Aside from the bike lane crossing over the A14, which is good, the rest of the bike infrastructure along the route is risible. Cambridge isn't one of those places that won't do anything on the bike infrastructure front, it just rarely does anything well enough to be better than doing nothing would have been.

Where has this perception come from that it's not safe? I have walked and cycled all my life, and I'm still here. I've hurtled up and down Newport road on a bike for 25 years. Lots of people think I am mad. And yet here I am. Nothing is totally safe. Ironically, the "it's not safe" brigade are probably the same people that think it's okay to park on the pavement outside the school.

I don't know and I'm not saying cycling isn't safe - it is. Your assessment of the risk you run riding your bike may differ, however, from a parent's assessment of the risk of letting their kid weave through the manic school run traffic. And, indeed, from schools' assessment of the reputational risk of any of their pupils being seriously injured or killed on the way to or from school, especially on school grounds or close by. If you want to send your child to school on a bike these days, expect the school to discourage this strongly, insist on often quite impractical safety measures etc.

The school run traffic problem has spiralled since the 90s and my theory is the presence of more cars is perceived to increase the risk to the kids who walk and cycle (which it probably does), which leads more parents to drive their kids, which leads to busier roads, more cars and a greater perception of risk, and so on in a terrible loop that will lead us to the US / Canada position where cycling to school simply isn't allowed, walking is unheard of and only poor kids take the bus.

 

[BingMan]

. Traffic was much less back than,today parents are too worried of their children being in a traffic accident to let them walk to school, perhaps that is the reason for the school car run, too much traffic for children to be considered "safe" when they walk to school.

Ironically the reason that there is so much traffic is schoolo run itsself

 

[The Ham]

The 3 mile (2 miles for under 8's) distance to school for free school buses is still current. There are exceptions for safety, however given that the safety check is typically done by a guy who probably hasn't done a school run in their life doesn't help.

A lot of roads were built before cars, with a lot more being built during the age of "car is king" or at least by engineers who still have that mindset.

Roads should be designed to facilitate:
Streets (residential access only) for six year olds
Neighbourhoods (so access to key locations like schools) for nine year olds
Towns (so everywhere) for twelve year olds

However, it's going to take a long time for that to start to be noticeable, not least because when councils try and implement schemes there's a backlash from car drivers who behave like driving is a right and not a privilege.

(It is often the case that this is a vocal minority, however as they engage in correspondence with councillors, whilst those who would support the change trend to not be so passionate or active in their engagement).

That puts council staff in a difficult position, to the point where it causes then stress that they are concerned that a scheme isn't done right because they are told that it doesn't meet standards. If they don't have good engineering support, which tells them that the "advice" from the public is wrong, then they could roll back on schemes which would actually be good in bringing the change needed.

 

[biko]

Even in The Netherlands school runs are a problem but I expect situations we perceive as problem would be acceptable in the UK. Over the years more parents started to bring their children to school using the car instead of bicycle leading to chaotic situations around schools. Solutions are often campaigns and redesigning the area around a school to make parking difficult. Another out-of-the-box possibility I’ve heard about is a road safety project with the school children which led to children speaking to their parents about it (which is more effective than other adults).

Secondary schools don’t have any school run problems generally as children will go themselves, predominantly cycling and in some cases by public transport. Special school services exist in some specific cases (schools with a specific catchment area or special schools), but mostly pupils use regular services

 

[The Ham]

Even in The Netherlands school runs are a problem but I expect situations we perceive as problem would be acceptable in the UK. Over the years more parents started to bring their children to school using the car instead of bicycle leading to chaotic situations around schools. Solutions are often campaigns and redesigning the area around a school to make parking difficult. Another out-of-the-box possibility I’ve heard about is a road safety project with the school children which led to children speaking to their parents about it (which is more effective than other adults).

Secondary schools don’t have any school run problems generally as children will go themselves, predominantly cycling and in some cases by public transport. Special school services exist in some specific cases (schools with a specific catchment area or special schools), but mostly pupils use regular services

The thing is, if roads were suitable, upper end of junior school agreed children should also be able to take themselves to/from school as well as secondary school children.

 

[AY1975]

In the Netherlands a very high proportion of children cycle to school.

And in many other great cycling countries such as Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and Belgium (or at least they do in the more cycle friendly cities such as Ghent and Bruges).

 

[Bikeman78]

The thing is, if roads were suitable, upper end of junior school agreed children should also be able to take themselves to/from school as well as secondary school children.

I walked to school from the age of nine. My daughter is nine and started walking alone when she started year five a few weeks ago.

 

[Deerfold]

I walked to school from the age of nine. My daughter is nine and started walking alone when she started year five a few weeks ago.

I walked alone from the age of 9, crossing one main road with a patrol and 2 minor roads, but I moved to a nearer school (which had moved nearer my house than when I started school). Before that I usually had a 3 mile round trip walk with my mum (who did 6 miles a day!) with an occasional drop off by car, parked safely a couple of hundred yards away.

 

[BongoStar]

In Reading and West Berkshire area, primary schools will allow children to leave on their own from year 6 onwards. Reception to year 5 must be accompanied by a parent or named person.

For someone where you can't leave the child in school and just go, have to hang around till 8:45 when the bell rings, no matter how fast you walk back, being at work for a 9am start is a stretch. Doubly so if you have to be at an office far from your home.

The current safeguarding rules make it difficult for most parents whose job doesn't afford them a flexible start.

 

[Dr_Paul]

My colleagues and I have had to deal with some awful behaviour from the state school kids (sometimes involving BTP).

That reminds me of when I was on a school trip around 1970 and some brat of a schoolkid heaved a brickbat at the coach as we went through Putney. We assumed that he came from Elliott School, a right rough-house at the time, but discussing this years later with a pal who had been there, he doubted it: 'If he'd come from Elliott, it wouldn't have been half a brick.'

Returning to the topic of the school run, Kings Road in Richmond has long been the home for many expensive prep schools. A few years back I rode my bike up the road at school finishing time, and the roadway was clogged by mums in big motors waiting for their kids. An unfortunate builder in his van was stuck in the midst of them, unable to move, as none of the mums would consider moving her motor to let him out of the jam. I rode along the pavement as there was no room on the roadway.