Children on Public Transit

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by ken0042

I wonder if it's a spin on another story, but there is a CBE parent who is opposed to paying the noon hour supervision fees now that the students have to take public transit to school. Her reasoning, if they are old enough to take transit by themselves to school, they are old enough to eat lunch without supervision.

Actually, that makes a lot of sense.

[Fighting Banana Slug]

I agree that there is probably a heightened sense of paranoia around basically everything to do with our children, but to be fair CF, Calgary's population might have been 400k in your day. A city of 1.5M is a more complicated scenario, given the different routes and problems that might arise.

[Looch City]

Homeless everywhere (even in the south!), needles and empty beer cans thrown around... you walk outside you get shot.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by Fighting Banana Slug

I agree that there is probably a heightened sense of paranoia around basically everything to do with our children, but to be fair CF, Calgary's population might have been 400k in your day. A city of 1.5M is a more complicated scenario, given the different routes and problems that might arise.

Kids in Asia don't have any issues with even larger populations and much more complex bus routes. There are plenty of elementary school kids I saw getting on trains/buses in Japan and HK without problem.

Kids these days (even if I think it's excessive) have access to cell phones and Google maps. If they still can't figure out how to get home without all of that like we did as kids, I don't know what to say. Though maybe I can see an argument of more kids getting hit getting to the bus (just more pedestrians of that age in general on the roads) when road conditions are bad (icy, slick etc.).

[opendoor]

I think our society has just become quite a bit more risk averse over time. It's the same reason people wear bike helmets now even though cycling isn't any more dangerous than it used to be. And why safety standards for everything are much higher.

So sure a kid born in the '70s was grew up with much more independence than a kid today. But when he was born he might've also gotten driven home from the hospital on his mother's lap, rarely worn a seatbelt, and grown up with his parents chain smoking around him all the time.

Ideally people would be able to realize when accepting minor risk has big upsides (in the case of allowing children to be independent) and when it does not, but sometimes nuance is lost on society.

[manwiches]

Originally Posted by jwslam

I've been meaning to take 72 or 73 all the way around once... never gotten to it.

Re transit being sketchy: I don't take transit after 630pm anywhere, but agree that it should be a non-issue for anyone who is old enough to pay a fare to ride alone.

lolol... i did this one afternoon in high school after hanging out at a friends house. I'm notorious for falling asleep anywhere, and especially drives or busrides. So i got on the 73 going the wrong way, and woke up an hour later wondering where the eff I was. I ended up calling my dad from the payphone at Market Mall for him to pick me up. I can still feel the disappointing head shaking the whole car ride home. lol

[MacDaddy77]

^^^ I agree with this. Why should they have to pay both just because CBE says so.

If it's a yellow bus sure that's provided by CBE but if your forcing families to use public transit this response should be expected

[troutman]

I let my 9-year-old ride the subway alone. I got labeled the ‘world’s worst mom.’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...=.d817dd6dfb78

Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone

http://www.freerangekids.com/why-i-l...-subway-alone/

[Bunk]

Government mandated helicopter parenting.

This guy is very obviously a responsible parent teaching his kids a type of independence.

[jwslam]

Originally Posted by Bunk

Government mandated helicopter parenting.

Kinda necessary when you live in a society where we hand out free money to people who shouldn't be having kids, and they end up having more kids.

For every one properly educated child, there are 2 that were never raised properly to survive, but the government says we have to dumb down the world to cater to the lowest denominator, which is very very low. So much for Darwinism... #30forSunnyside!

[Sainters7]

Originally Posted by Calgary14

Agree with the comment above about people looking down on transit. Some people assume you take transit because you can't afford parking downtown, don't have a vehicle etc. Truth is some people would simply prefer to commute via transit instead of driving. I'm one of those people. I like driving on an open road in the country but Deerfoot at 7am headed downtown? No thanks.

I always thought that was more of an American mindset, of a class contempt issue with public transit. Maybe I just don't travel in snobby enough circles. The bus can be annoying, but I've never had a problem with the train, agreed that I'd much rather train it into downtown than dealing with that rush hour gong show.

I hate driving downtown, so many one way streets, closures, and just insane amounts of jaywalkers / jaybikers, no thanks. No matter how nice of a vehicle I have in my garage going forward, as long as I work downtown I'll always own a transit pass.

[bizaro86]

My 3 year old loves taking the ctrain downtown. (Stampede, library, etc) and wants to know if he can do it by himself. To me, that suggests kids are naturally curious explorers, and if they aren't willing to take transit by themselves at 12 that is societies fault for pansification.

[Resolute 14]

Related: Notley's Bill 1 has forced 16,000 kids in Calgary onto public transit and double those parents' transportation costs. This a consequence of a bill that Notley uses to brag about making things cheaper for parents.

http://www.calgarysun.com/2017/09/05...-school-begins

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

My 3 year old lives taking the ctrain downtown. (Stampede, library, etc) and wants to know if he can do it by himself. To me, that suggests kids are naturally curious explorers, and if they aren't willing to take transit by themselves at 12 that is societies fault for pansification.

Yeah there is a real social component here.
It's not that the kids don't know how to take the bus alone, it's if something wrong were to happen, he doesn't know how to ask someone for help. He's helpless.

I think when we were kids, if we got lost on the bus or riding our bikes somewhere, we'd know how to ask somehow for directions. But we were used to talking to people, neighbors, grannies, other kids etc.. Kids today, they don't talk to anybody.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Ideally people would be able to realize when accepting minor risk has big upsides (in the case of allowing children to be independent) and when it does not, but sometimes nuance is lost on society.

Agreed. There's a point at which anxiety becomes pathological. We can imagine the catastrophic downside to a 10 year old taking the bus alone (run over, abduction), but we have much more difficulty imagining - and society doesn't help us imagine - the downsides of lack of freedom and exposure to risk (dependency, brittleness, passivity).

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Related: Notley's Bill 1 has forced 16,000 kids in Calgary onto public transit and double those parents' transportation costs. This a consequence of a bill that Notley uses to brag about making things cheaper for parents.

http://www.calgarysun.com/2017/09/05...-school-begins

I'm with the government on this. When did we start expecting the government to pick up the tab for shuttling kids all over the city to alternative schools? When I went to a different junior high than my designated school, my family had to pay for transit out of our own pocket. I don't recall anyone complaining. Nobody forced me to go to a different school.

Local school = subsidized transport.

Alternative school = user pay.

Seems fair to me.

Originally Posted by GirlySports

I think when we were kids, if we got lost on the bus or riding our bikes somewhere, we'd know how to ask somehow for directions. But we were used to talking to people, neighbors, grannies, other kids etc.. Kids today, they don't talk to anybody.

That too. Our parents assumed we'd figure stuff out on our own, and if we didn't an adult would help. Now, kids are raised to never had any social contact with adults in public.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

Related: Notley's Bill 1 has forced 16,000 kids in Calgary onto public transit and double those parents' transportation costs. This a consequence of a bill that Notley uses to brag about making things cheaper for parents.

http://www.calgarysun.com/2017/09/05...-school-begins

This is a good thing. We shouldn't have multiple subsidized forms of transit. Children aren't special.

Out of interest, how many of you have kids that responded in this thread. If so, what are their ages, etc.

I have issues with the LRT stations and kids that need to stop at one, get transferred, etc. Nothing good ever happens at an LRT station.

I am more than confident my kids could handle the city bus, but not as keen on them handling the people that hangout at LRT stations.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by GGG

This is a good thing. We shouldn't have multiple subsidized forms of transit. Children aren't special.

We still do have multiple subsidized forms of transit. In this case, the government is picking and choosing which children are special.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

We still do have multiple subsidized forms of transit. In this case, the government is picking and choosing which children are special.

I probably don't really understand enough about it, but isn't it only the kids who are going to school somewhere out of their designated school that are needing public transit? In which case, the parents chose to make them special, not the govt?

[CliffFletcher]

My kids are between 9 and 11.

I hear what you're saying about LRT stations. No doubt there are unsavoury people who hang out there. And the trains themselves at night feel less safe than they did 20 years ago. But I don't know what exactly you'd be afraid of sketchy people at stations doing to kids during the day, when there are all kinds of people around.

Getting accustomed to being in the presence of dirtbags and weirdos is an urban life skill. We can't protect kids from it their whole lives. Better they learn to be comfortable and streetwise when they're 12 or 13 than shelter them so they're totally freaked out the first time they see someone muttering to themselves in a hoody when they're 20.

I used to work with someone who moved to Calgary from small town Newfoundland when she was around 30. She was absolutely horrified by homeless people, and almost had a panic attack whenever someone sketchy came within 20 feet of her. She would never take public transportation, or walk around anywhere downtown except a few major streets during the day. When she saw a dude drinking a tallboy in the park down the street from her house in the far burbs, she called the cops.

I don't want my kids to be raised with that kind of fear, to restrict where and when they go out so they never come into contact with anyone but other middle-class suburbanites.