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Comment by shcheklein | Hacker News Reader

Oh yeah. Check the Mission Bay in San Francisco. Everything is walkable and very relevant to my life. I never drive to a grocery store, day care, coffee (3 - 4 places with excellent espresso), kid activities (there a bunch of places - music, soccer field, etc). In fact the first 4-5 years, until we had 2 kids we even didn't own a car - there was no need in SF ... and we enjoyed it a lot.

Now, with my second kid going to school (public) I have to drive (it's literally 1 mile). It has changed the whole schedule. That single drive! Annoys me as hell. It's hard to imagine how convenient it is when you don't have to drive anywhere, even school, day care, etc. This makes a huge difference.

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Why don't you walk them to school

How dangerous is it to walk there with your child to get them to school

Not dangerous (except traffic that you have to cross a few times).

1 mile is a good amount of time to walk with a kid.

A better angle would be biking the kid to school, but it's possible/probable that the route isn't good for bikes.

also in some places it is extremely normal for kids to travel unattended to school using mass transportation.

in NYC, for example, this is probably one of the most common methods of getting to school.

Yup, but that's because, well, the public transit in NYC is just a lot better than almost every other US city (and, let's face it, has a higher proportion of "normal people" riding it).

part of the problem in the US is that the parents, and often times the wider public, give children much less credit than they are do.

children are learning but they are not dumb. They can generally recognize dangerous situations and exercise good judgment, and shocking crimes like stranger abduction are incredibly rare. they can, if services exist, go to the playground and the school unassisted, but unfortunately we now live in a society where even if you trust your kids, someone else might call child services on you.

Depending on kid age, scooters are also potentially a good option.

My partner does this once a week. We have an electric kids scooter. She has to drive the smaller scooter attached to her own since there is no place at school to leave a bike or a scooter. So, works fine, but still quite tedious. Schools apparently are not designed for that, probably they don't want taking care, be responsible, etc, etc.

It can be done, it takes substantially more time with a kid + walking back. My partner is driving my kido using electric scooter - which works fine as well.

> Check the Mission Bay in San Francisco. Everything is walkable and very relevant to my life.

And no affordable parking for people to come and visit you. It's fine. They won't.

To clarify the first part for people who haven't visited yet. About half the neighborhood is some kind of UCSF special district and street parking is reserved. Even at night where I looked. The rest is parking meters and wide streets with needlessly forbidden parking.

These parking meters go wild with what electronic meters allow. The hourly cost changes depending on time of day and events (there are 3 very large event venues that could be served or could abuse this parking area) from perhaps 50 cents (truly cheap for a meter, except no free hours if I remember right) to over 10 dollars (eye watering). And there are no signs showing the current cost or cost schedule - you have to let each meter tell you. And most of these spaces are still full - There is certainly money to be extracted there.

Street parking in Mission Bay is a traumatizing experience :-)

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