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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

When I read the headline I thought they meant “and the rest walk”. Most Dutch primary schools are small and local. My school (not in Assen), back in the nineties, had a rule that you weren’t allowed to come by bike if you lived less than 1km away because they didn’t have enough space for the bikes otherwise. I always looked with envy to the kids who got to bike, I had to walk.

All I mean to say is, this is a pretty normal statistic (anecdotally) and going to primary school by other means than biking or walking happens but isn’t super common except in very rural areas or special schools (either for special needs kids or based on some niche philosophy) that attract kids from a larger distance.

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Heh yeah, when I read the headline my first reaction was "that would not be special in the Netherlands", before realising that, of course, Assen is a Dutch city.

Edit: see also this fun video comparison of school drop-off somewhere in the US and somewhere in the Netherlands: https://www.reddit.com/r/kutautos/comments/uau4rw/als_alle_s...

Oh boy, how do people put up with that drive through?

Selection bias. Nobody who doesn't normally drive in a lackadaisical manner or values their time drops their kid off at school or picks them up if they can help it.

What's the alternative for people who value their time? (Honest question, I'm not from the US.)

Big yellow metal box full of kids.

That video (US) is super bizarre.

Presumably you could just get out of the car and walk like 50 metres to the school entrance? What's the point of the queue?

Nowhere near enough space for all the parents to park. School wouldn’t release the kids to search out their parents’ cars on their own, but must confirm each child is released directly to the right parent.

It's mostly a social phenomenon and highly dependent on where you are... and most interestingly people and educators adapt to either method as soon as they move to a different place where the habits are different, and that's within the US.

That's a school drop-off line, you can see children leaving the cars and entering the school at 0:27.

My first reaction (as a Dutchie) was "only 2/3?". If I had to estimate the number at my old school it would be 90%.

(edit: I see that number is for primary schools, that makes more sense, for high schools it would be higher)

My thought was: "Two-thirds? Must be a fairly spread-out area then, for so many kids to not walk." I too remember a rule that kids living close to school weren't supposed to come by bike.

What about secondary schools? There is a stretch of road on the way to the local Junior High (in California,US) that is absolutely not safe to bicycle (I've personally witnessed 3 car crashes and a car vs motorcycle crash each of which would have also hit a bicyclist had there been one there). Due to a nearby freeway and the geography, there aren't a lot of good alternate routes. The "next best" option adds 2km to the route, much of which is unseparated (other than by paint) by traffic with a speed limit of 45mph which regularly travels 50mph (70-80km/h).

most dutch cities have secondary schools which are easily bikable by most students. In my personal experience, everyone i know biked, including people who had to bike for more then an hour to get home. This was roughly 30 years ago. But i doubt it changed much.

Mind you, biking is so ingrained in dutch culture that alternatives are rarely used unless the distance is either too large (more then an hour one way usually) or there is some special need why one does not bike. This is especially true for teenagers and students, because other forms of transportation are either slow or inflexible (public transport) or far too expensive (motorized scooter) or not legal for them to use yet (a car).

I think on most Dutch secondary schools, the percentage of kids biking to school would be about 99%. Well, some of the older ones might ride a moped or something like that.

Fwiw a good 20% of my (high school) class came by (public) bus because they lived two towns over.

If you only lived one town over, or closer, (eg < 15km) you’d bike.

Calling this a normal statistic feels wrong. Amazing that their are places that is true, but I live on a literal island and the vast majority of kids get to school by bus. With the next set by drop off.

Normal in the Netherlands. This article makes it out to be specific to one suburb in Assen.

It’s like writing an article about how great the croissants are in eastern Toulouse. It’s France, the croissants are great everywhere.

Ok. That makes a lot more sense. Being normal to an area might be the case. I'd imagine for a lot of folks, the point stands. Just, it is not only a single suburb that demonstrates it.

It’s normal in pretty much all of Europe. In rural areas people might need to catch a bus in, or even be driven. But the vast majority of children in towns and cities walk to school. My parents used to walk me until I was about 8, then I walked myself.

No it is not. Eastern European countries are very car centric and so are the smaller austrian cities + surrounding towns.

I imagine Germany to be the same (outside of the major cities that is).

It only seems that everyone walks to school because everyone seems to live close to one. But that’s not the case. Far from it.

Even in Eastern Europe, which is quite car centric by European standarda, kids typically live close enough to school to walk there, at least in cities. Also, public transport is very common, especially for older kids, whose don't want to be driven around by their parents but are neither old enough nor rich enough to drive a car.

This is a remnant of the old era where the 90s kids lived in the commie blocks and had schools right in their neighborhood.

This has changed tho as the families are moving out to suburbs which are heavily car centric.

While things are indeed moving in that direction, at least in the biggest city in Eastern Europe (Bucharest) its far from reaching the vast majority of the population.

But it's not abnormal in the rest of the Netherlands either. It's pretty ubiquitous.

"Normal" is geographically bound.

I was born in Europe and was not aware of any other mode of going to primary or secondary school other than walking.

Now I'm in a small town in Canada where the city council consistently votes against any sort of public transit let alone walking improvements, and every family has multiple cars. Plus, most kids would not be allowed to walk alone and unaccompanied to school even if they could :(

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