Happy car-clown carousel!

[Nightingale]

I saw this today, and knew exactly the where it would be appreciated! :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrxxX-59b58

[FIT_Goat]

Wow, I thought the car-rider line at my elementary school was ridiculous.  This is just a whole different level of horrible.  I was feeling stressed looking at that line and all that traffic.  The comments below the video are also very entertaining.

[Miss Piggy]

Disclaimer: DINK here.

When did these car lines become a thing? Does nobody advocate riding a bus anymore? WTF? Every elementary school around now has some sort of ridiculous car line, maybe not as bad as this video, but ridiculous nonetheless. What am I missing?

[Khaetra]

It's just as bad here as in that video.  The big kicker is that in my area you are not allowed to ride bikes on the sidewalk and they do strictly enforce it, so with no bike paths to the schools (at least the ones on the major roads) plus drivers who don't pay attention it's really no wonder why drop-offs end up that way.  Back in the 70's/80's I used to ride my bike to school everyday, but today I wouldn't even chance it.

[RWD]

Sounds like this was a test that didn't work out. From the video description, lots of excuses:

I decided that I needed to make a description on what is happening here. There are too many opinions below that are lost on what they think they see here. This was a test by the NCDOT to try and alleviate traffic backing up from the school into the highway. They wanted to utilize the extra parking area for the drop off line and not let kids get dropped off anymore. This plan did not work and was reverted back to the plan that had been in place for years. The drop off line goes around the parking area and the parking spots are also used to walk your child in. The school does provide buses, but some of these buses come by some areas at 6am to pick up kids. Most parents both work and they drop their child off on the way to work. There are over 700 kids at this school and where would you put 700 bicycles if they could ride to school. Riding on a bike or walking is not an option because this school has kids 15 miles away. Who would let their kid ride a bike or walk 15 miles to school everyday. This is an area that is very rural and there is no way the state would ever install hundreds of miles of sidewalks that don't even lead to a town. You should see it on BBQ day, the largest fundraiser for a school in the state. They sell 19,000 tickets at $9 a plate and have sold out for over 60 years the BBQ fundraiser has been in place. 15,000 lbs of BBQ, 2,500 gallons of stew and 500 gallons of slaw is made and sold here in 1 day. That is something to see. So to all the negative comments, everywhere is not like where you live. Things are different for a reason. This isn't New York or Chicago.

[The Guru]

Does it occur to none of these parents-or at least those coming from the upper-right in the video- to just drop their rugrats off before the carousel and let them walk what looks like maybe 50 feet to the school? Or does that constitute child neglect in this day and age?

[Khaetra]

Does it occur to none of these parents-or at least those coming from the upper-right in the video- to just drop their rugrats off before the carousel and let them walk what looks like maybe 50 feet to the school? Or does that constitute child neglect in this day and age?

I can only speak for my area but the schools here have rules that if your driven to school you must be dropped off right in front and cannot be dropped off by the sidewalk or anywhere within the round.  I don't know what would happen if parents did drop them off anywhere else, I might have to poke around and find out.

[NoStacheOhio]

This reminds me of one of the OT threads discussing school funding (by way of Trump, I think), and how many districts build mega-campuses far from the neighborhoods where people live. This seems to be one logical conclusion of that.

[Fomerly known as something]

Disclaimer: DINK here.

When did these car lines become a thing? Does nobody advocate riding a bus anymore? WTF? Every elementary school around now has some sort of ridiculous car line, maybe not as bad as this video, but ridiculous nonetheless. What am I missing?

It depends on the District, some have eliminated buses to save money.  Not a big deal in my town where the elementary schools are with walking distance (a mile).  But the next town over has a couple where the elementary school is over a mile and the HS is 4-5 miles from some houses.

[slugline]

When you look at the community in Google Maps satellite view, you can really see that this is a pretty rural area. There can't be very many kids in the "walkshed" or "bikeshed" of this location. With that being said, surely they can take advantage of their rural situation and put more of those surrounding roads to work by building adjacent walking paths. There would be remarkably less congestion if the parents and school were OK with drop-offs happening even just a quarter-mile away.

[paddedhat]

This reminds me of one of the OT threads discussing school funding (by way of Trump, I think), and how many districts build mega-campuses far from the neighborhoods where people live. This seems to be one logical conclusion of that.

That might of been my post. My wife taught at a middle school on one of these remote mega-campuses. It was one of the extreme ex-urbs of NYC. Not only was every morning and afternoon a total cluster-F, much like the video,  but there was a running battle to prevent parents ( The ones who left for the city, sometimes hours before the school doors were unlocked at 7 AM )  from dropping kids off in the dark and cold, locked out of the building and totally unsupervised. Also given the aggressive and unpleasant nature of some of the parents, the parent pick up lines had to be heavily monitored by several security personnel. These folks were true pros. often retired LEOs, who put up with a lot of idiots that were convinced that rules didn't apply to them, and that they were far too important to wait with the commoners.

[lost_in_the_endless_aisle]

This is obscene! I would kill myself rather than face entering that vehicular intestine! The only thing scarier than that sight is the knowledge that someone designed that system. I could have proved it wouldn't work with a simple computer simulation...

[rawr237]

I would much prefer to bus my kids, but can imagine a situation where I wouldn't...if my spouse and I both worked late hours, it could be pretty rough getting up at 5:30am to get the kids on the 6am bus -- it might be worth it for us to get the extra couple hours of sleep every day, and drop them off after waking at 7:30am, on the way to work. (All purely hypothetical as I am SNK)

*shrug* It looks pretty ridiculous, but it was just an experiment. They reverted to 'normal' traffic pattern eventually. I found watching the sped up video mildly amusing, like watching small creatures being herded through a maze (sadly not as cute as furry hamsters though). Would certainly be less amused to be in the maze myself.

[acroy]

Wow that is creepy! :) thanks for sharing!
Happily homeshooling here. the school commute is from the breakfast room to the schoolroom, 12ft away.

[Prairie Stash]

Hurray for socialist Canada. Here there's a mandate that all kids beyond a certain distance from school be provided bus service. Now I'm curious, if your parents can't drive you how do you get to school? Do you rely on friends help more? Skip more school? What do the kids do in the absence of the cars? In my situation the closest school was 20 miles, at 6 years old that's an epic journey.

Weirdly, if my parents worked 8-4:30 the bus provided free childcare. I was on the bus at 7:20 and home at 5:10 (approx.). Silver linings in every situation. There wasn't a way to do dropoff/pickups since the school was not about to provide supervision outside of regular hours, teachers want to get paid.

[Just Joe]

Our youngest's school is exactly like this. There are sidewalks along the road for half a mile in either direction but who wants a little kid to walk to school by themselves? Nobody walks it seems.

IF the widewalk extended to our street I'd be okay with him riding a bicycle but alas our street is 1/2 mile beyond the end of the sidewalk. The widewalk only extended to the fancy neighborhood, not to our's - an ordinary place. It does not go anywhere but the McMansion neighborhood. They don't have sidewalks either inside the neighborhood.

Between the sidewalk end and our neighborhood is a dangerous (for bikes and pedestrians) curvy hill. I have personally witnessed a half dozen cars lose control due to excessive speed and wet asphalt. No guard rails. When we walk the hill we are walking 15 ft from the pavement through people's front yards. So far, nobody complains.

At the elementary school they only allow a single lane of cars making drop offs so slow... Fortunately at the middle school right next door they allow two lanes of dropoffs - and guess what - people won't hardly use the second lane. They'd rather wait in the lane closest to the front door. Some won't even let (or make) their kids exit the car until they get to the bend right in front of the door thus slowing the drop offs even further. Teachers don't manage this very well to encourage kids to exit sooner.

We find that for drop offs if we are ten minutes earlier than the crowd the line moves fast. Traffic is also faster on our commute all the way to work. In the afternoon if I pick up our child (appointments only really) I wait until late in the time window. Ten minutes tops. There are people who will come an hour (!) early to wait in line. Good grief! We drop off in the morn and utilize the bus in the afternoon.

[NoStacheOhio]

This reminds me of one of the OT threads discussing school funding (by way of Trump, I think), and how many districts build mega-campuses far from the neighborhoods where people live. This seems to be one logical conclusion of that.

That might of been my post. My wife taught at a middle school on one of these remote mega-campuses. It was one of the extreme ex-urbs of NYC. Not only was every morning and afternoon a total cluster-F, much like the video,  but there was a running battle to prevent parents ( The ones who left for the city, sometimes hours before the school doors were unlocked at 7 AM )  from dropping kids off in the dark and cold, locked out of the building and totally unsupervised. Also given the aggressive and unpleasant nature of some of the parents, the parent pick up lines had to be heavily monitored by several security personnel. These folks were true pros. often retired LEOs, who put up with a lot of idiots that were convinced that rules didn't apply to them, and that they were far too important to wait with the commoners.
[/quote

I can't help but think there has to be a better way

[mm1970]

Disclaimer: DINK here.

When did these car lines become a thing? Does nobody advocate riding a bus anymore? WTF? Every elementary school around now has some sort of ridiculous car line, maybe not as bad as this video, but ridiculous nonetheless. What am I missing?

Well, in that video, I don't see much in the way of sidewalks.

Our school is 50% bussed from downtown, and everyone else is on their own.

A fair # of people are transfer students (like us), ineligible for the bus.

A lot of families can't get their butts in gear in the morning...it flabbergasts me the # of SUVs and cars that are 5-15 mins late EVERY DAY.

Dropoff is not terribly hard.  I don't do it - we carpool, so my neighbor does.  She usually opts to pull off a block before the school and let the kids walk in.  Only issue with that is that they don't let you do that with kindergarteners.

Pickup at the end of the day, if in after school care, requires you to sign your kid out.