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Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

Isn't it around that number everywhere? At least if you include walking: I can imagine that in high-density housing, many people live so close, they don't need any transportation.

It seems like the author just happened to have found an article about this new suburb in Assen but that it's actually just reporting on the status quo.

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As an American this definitely seems exceptional. I grew up in rural and suburban areas without sidewalks, and biking/walking to school was unheard of. I interpreted this as just one proof by example that it could work, and as a call to arms for trying it elsewhere.

Counterexample: in our rural Montana town large numbers of kids bike to school and many more walk. We do have sidewalks and heavy traffic bypasses the town on the interstate.

I guess it depends on where in America you are. Around here (city), walking and biking to elementary school is pretty common. When you get towards middle school and high school, the distances get larger, so more students take public transportation. School buses are very rare; I don't think I've seen them outside of field trips (though I do think some students take them).

Driving always seemed like a less common form of transportation.

Here in San Francisco, you have the school physically closest to you and you have the school to which you get assigned. In most cases, they are not the same. So you end up traveling 20-45 minutes by bus. Isn't this the norm in the USA? Which is why there are yellow school buses everywhere?

Here you have the school closest to you that you have the right to attend, and then you have the option of being on a lottery for schools that a further away. Looking at this[1], it seems like San Francisco is similar, unless I'm misunderstanding something?

One problem is that in some parts of the city, the public schools are so bad that people are trying to move to out of boundary schools or charter schools that are further away. But the main issue there is not giving people functional local schools rather than lack of cycling infrastructure (which is actually somewhat developed here).

[1] https://www.sfusd.edu/student-assignment-policy/tiebreakers/...

Certainly not if you define everywhere as including all of the US and Canada.

I meant the Netherlands actually, the country this is about. It's like speaking of Medicine Hat[1] specifically, when it's actually normal in all of Canada.

[1] actual city name. I chose the one nearest in population to Assen and this is honest name. https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/4167203

I think the point of this article is that this could be tried other places?

Sure, but why single out a random town instead of just using the model that is being applied similarly throughout the country? 17 million people is a much larger sample size than 60 thousand, ought to be more convincing that it can work in various situations.

That is kind of the first two paragraphs of the article, though? Right?

Yes, which feels kind of weird: first mention Assen, then start writing about the Netherlands as a whole as though that was the topic all along. Idk, maybe it's just me

I think that is just a natural, "start with a specific example as a hook" that actually works really well in education and general propaganda.

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