Reply to Are walking routes and times taken into account for determining walking zones?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I made some of these comments in the boundary threads but they probably got buried so wanted to bring it up in it's own thread.

Looking at the potential walking zones for high schools, according to Google Maps some walks will take forty to forty five minutes and along busy nonresidential commuter routes.

In board meetings, board members talk about how forty minute bus rides are not ideal.

I would think that a forty minute walk would be considered even worse.  Where if kids are on a bus, they can at least just sit and enjoy the ride.  But with walking, they need to carry their book bag, instrument, sports equipment in the heat, snow or rain.

I've seen instances where MCPS cancelled schools while kids were already at the bus stops.  So kids walking to school would have already been on their way to school.  And have seen kids slip and fall on their butts when walking on the sidewalks in the snow to school.

And even if kids ride their bike to school, it would be hard to carry everything on a bike and it's not really possible when there's snow and ice on the ground.

When determining walking zones, does MCPS take into account the route and time it would take to walk?  And if they do, is forty minutes considered acceptable?  Or do they just mostly count anything within a specified radius as the walking zone?

I know there are some areas for my kids school that gets bus service that are within two miles from the school.  But I think the walking route doesn't have sidewalks and may be why they get bus service.

And I know, I know, in the old days people used to 5 to 10 miles, uphill, barefoot in the snow to school.  But times are different now.  With more traffic, more books and other school related things they carry, and kids just do different things then back then.[/quote]

There might not be routes in each neighborhood (not sure how those bus routes are actually planned) but taking the free-for-all RideOn bus (county bus) could be faster than walking.[/quote]

That's another issue for our particular neighborhood.

Where the first issue is that we currently get bus service to another school but are designated for a walking zone to another.  And the issue being that the walk would be about 40 minutes along busy commuter routes for that new school.

The other issue is that we have a bus stop right in front of our neighborhood that goes right by the currently assigned schools(all three, the ES, MS and HS) in about ten or fifteen minutes.  There is no direct bus service that goes to the new school.  With the closest stops being about a fifteen to twenty minute walk to get to.  And one of them requiring transfers to get to the school.

So it seems that not only should walkability and time be taken into account but also the possibility of public transportation in determining school zones.[/quote]

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