School is in session………….. and so is the traffic!
 

I’m always amazed when school starts up and traffic is horrendous. Is it:

Teachers driving to work.
Students driving to school.
School buses holding up traffic with frequent stops
Parents driving to work
Fill in the blank____________

Parents driving their child to school, and teachers driving to school. There is an elementary school a couple of miles from my house. They always have a huge fuster cluck of traffic because so many parents drive their snowflakes to school. The school busses are busy as well. No doubt many of the parents driving little Johnny to school live out in the countryside, and the school bus does not venture out there.

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This is line I had to wait in to get to school every day!

^^^^ This, this, this and more this :(. Quite obvious at the middle and elementary schools near my other property .... out in the county. Much worse than any commuter traffic I experienced decades ago .... I avoid it if at all possible... it sux!

In Charleston, we have a lot of bridges because of water. There’s only so many ways to get from one place to another. That doesn’t help.

What took me 30 minutes yesterday, took me 1 hour and 15 minutes today.

Out in the county (used to be rural) .... routes are limited. Sometimes it takes 15 minutes to make a left-hand turn at a T intersection with a stop sign and backed up traffic ... and it's risky :(.

I actually enjoy watching our little ones get on and off the buses. It is all just so normal. And when they run and their backpacks which are almost as big as they are bounce up and down I cannot suppress a laugh.

I live just up the hill from a middle school.
You'd think these folks had never dropped their kids off before yesterday. Plus, they ALL had to drop the kid at the front door.

Of course, the school has no plan to alleviate the traffic issue that it causes. School sits on a corner of two streets but only uses the entrance from one street. Literally no one thought to use both entrances and parking lots and not allow parents to turn against traffic either entering the parking lot or leaving. So it just backs up in all directions.

Add to that the idiots that want to be the last to turn from one street to the other at the light. They end up out in the intersection when the light turns.

But it is nice to know there is a crossing guard on the bigger of the 2 streets. That really helped with the traffic.

I forgot to mention the amount of weed I smelled yesterday during my morning commute; both near the school and near the courthouse. Shocking how often I smell it during my drive.

Most all of the schools around here start after Labor Day.

I totally understand I grew up in a completely different era, the "Leave it to Beaver" generation. I walked to school (barefoot) in first grade. My brother is two and half years older walked with me. In my memory it was a mile or more. I looked it up on Google Earth and it was just 4 blocks of residential neighborhood in Pearl City, HI.

In third grade I rode my bike to school in San Marcos, TX. No bike locks, just park the bike in the bike rack. It was about 1/2 a mile. In 4th grade I walked to school the 4 blocks in Montgomery, AL.

When we lived on bases the Air Force provided an un-air-conditioned bus ride to school. They delivered me to school an hour before school started, so we had to just wait on school to open.

I don't remember dad ever driving us to school. Mom did a for part of one year, only because she was a substitute teacher and filled in when the regular teacher had a day of sick or personal time. It was a real shock to walk into one class and see my mom behind the teacher's desk on day.

I either walked, rode my bike, or rode the bus for my school days. Finally as a senior I was allowed to drive my tire burning 1960 VW bug with 36 HP to school. As I was not a cool kid with a muscle car I had to park in the corner of the lot with the other foreign cars.

I never did get to attend an air conditioned school. It was often 100+ degree in class. Sweat would drip from my nose onto test papers. Midwest City, OK was a HOT school in the summer. So was San Marcos, TX and Montgomery, AL.

Back to reality of 2023.

Walked to school early just to play around outside before home room. Got a ride sometimes if it was raining. Never got to stay home.

I've had a theory for several years. There aren't enough teachers or students driving for that to be the issue, especially since I see a big difference in the traffic on the Interstates. THere aren't that many folks commuting 20-30 miles into downtown from the 'burbs for middle school.

The issue is that when kids get out of school for the summer, families start taking vacations which means folks are off and therefore not driving to work. In my mind, that's the only thing that makes enough sense.

There must be a McDonalds at the top.

When I was young, most schools started a week or 1.5 weeks before labor day. When I was in HS, they switched it up start after labor day. My grandsons started school Aug 15.

The problem that we had in NoVA when they switched to starting after labor day (their reasoning was that many families went on vaca so kids missed school anyway), was that if you got a lot of snow days, weather days, etc..., then you had a problem with the kids being in school enough days to qualify as a whole year.

Glen, I have the same distance misperception. What seem like a 2 miles to elementary school was actually .8 miles. Junior high school was behind the elementary school, so it was the same .8.

Took the bus until fifth grade, and then we started riding our bikes. Parked them out front.

Junior high school started with seventh grade. Rode my bike for the first two years and then was too cool for that, so I walked. During the fall football season, buses were not running that late.

High school was 4.2 miles and started with grade 10, so I took the bus the first year. They had a little Mercedes bus system that I would take home after football practice. My junior year, I got to drive our 74 super beetle alternating days, since I shared a parking spot with a friend. The days I didn’t have a parking spot, I had to find a spot, and hopefully not get towed.

After going through the entire school system, kindergarten to junior year, I moved the summer before my senior year. I was bummed, but made friends that moved to Atlanta/Dunwoody, their senior year as well.

I'm gonna have to go check now .... I rode the school bus early on .... but the bus stop was probably .3 miles away. Rode my Schwinn starting about 5th grade on nice days ... I'm guessing 3 miles. My older sis was driving me in grades 7-8 ... she was in hs down the street. Then I walked in grades 9 & 10 .... mebbe 1.5 miles, until I got my license.

NO one's parents drove them that I can recall .... except that very first day of 1st grade. I still remember the classroom, and my teacher Ms. Works :D

For SF "the other college in Gainesville" things are insane the first week of the term, then the following two weeks are less insane but busy with full load, then students learn they can skip and drop and such... by end of term, things are really calm, which is good 'cause we usually get a stress-related ambulance call or two every finals week...

I hit that sort of situation in high traffic situations from time to time.

I remember one particular instance, I was having to go to work one Fri or Sat night. I was downtown where there were 4 one-way lanes crossing 4 other one-way lanes. I was in the 3rd lane from the left with the cross traffic going right to left. A bunch of those folks had the entire intersection blocked while were waiting to turn into a parking garage to go to a play. The light turned green for us and they still had all 4 lanes blocked. The car in front of me looked like it was a couple in their 50s or 60s (old enough to know better, wait outside of the intersection). So when the light turned, I pulled the front of my car right up to the driver's door of their car. The old man gave me a dirty look and a gesture to convey "I can't go anywhere! It's not my fault!"

There are days when it's really good that I don't drive something like this...

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Yeah but.......you know where all these people aren't? :)

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Around here grade school kids are driven to school. I think the parents think it is too dangerous to do anything else. Many high school kids are driven to school or they take their new BMW. Back in the 50's and 60's kids walked or caught a school bus some rode bikes. I think originally kids were guaranteed a ride to school provided by the school district. Not sure what happened with that.

I see ya, the guy with the piano!