All, I'm looking for advice on whether to stay in our current house or move a very short distance to be closer to our kids' future elementary school and pool. Here's the situation.
We have a 4yo and a baby. The 4yo will start elementary school (kindergarten) in 2 years, when he's about to turn 6. The baby will start in 5 years.
CURRENT HOUSE
Our current house is a 12-15 minute walk to an urban center with shops, restaurants, cafes, 2 grocery stores, and (most importantly) a commuter rail station. We both commute via rail right now, 3 days a week (we each work from home the other 2 days). We live on the near side of a busy, fast-moving road (2 lanes in each direction) to this urban center, which is nice bc we don't need to cross the busy road to walk into "town." There's a lot of cut-through traffic in our neighborhood; we can't let our older son play in our driveway without one of us being right there, bc he might run out into the street, which gets a lot of cars speeding or rolling through the stop sign at our corner. We are 2 blocks from a nice little park and playground area with equipment for toddlers as well as elementary school aged kids.
The main downside to our current house's location is that both our local elementary school as well as our local community pool (which we should get into next summer) are located across the big busy road. Which means that even as our kids get older and more independent (up to age 10 or so), we won't be comfortable with them walking to the school or the pool without an adult accompanying them. So they would probably take the bus to school (it stops right outside our current house) unless one of us could walk them the 15 minutes or so each way to/from school (or the pool).
As we look toward this next phase of our life -- having elementary aged kids who could walk to/from the school or pool by themselves provided the route was relatively safe -- we're considering moving across that busy road so we can be in the quieter, safer neighborhood adjacent to both the school and the pool.
NEW NEIGHBORHOOD PROS:
Would be 5 minute walk or less to both school and pool
School has huge playground and large athletic fields (which current playground doesn't have)
Roads are not thru-roads so streets are quieter and safer; some have sidewalks (which current hood does not have)
Closer to bike trail that leads downtown (cuts 5-10 minutes off bike commuting route)
Closer to library (makes it walking distance - 15-20 mins vs. 25-30 mins from current house)
NEW NEIGHBORHOOD CONS:
commuter rail becomes 20-25 min walk instead of 12-15 (and must cross busy road)
new hood would be equal distance from another grocery store, but route would be along the busy road instead of mostly through residential neighborhood
new hood is not considered quite as desirable as current hood (bc of distance from rail; houses are also a bit smaller, which doesn't bother us but bears on property values), but still is desirable
So what do you guys think -- given the ages of our kids, is it worth it to trade walkability to commuter rail/urban center (3x/week) for walkability to school (5x wk year round) and pool (5-7x/week in summer)? For this phase of our life, I tend to think yes, especially because the new neighborhood would incentivize us to bike commute more regularly, which helps counteract being farther away from the urban center and rail station. Would love to hear thoughts from anyone, especially if you've weighed similar considerations in making a move.