Parents Struggle To Observe the #WeekWithoutDriving
(Source: Flickr/Mark Ittleman.)
The first week of October marks the “national week without driving,” a challenge for elected officials, transportation officials, and those whose work intersects with the built environment to navigate the world they help construct without a car. The aim of the campaign, launched by the Disability Mobility Initiative in 2020, is for decision-makers to “understand the barriers and challenges that non-drivers face when trying to move safely in their communities.”
In 2023, in partnership with America Walks, the challenge went national and individuals of all professions and backgrounds were encouraged to go car free October 2–8. Hundreds of anecdotes and photos flooded social media under the hashtag #WeekWithoutDriving as people chose to commute to work by bus, transport their children to school by bike, and break up their grocery runs into smaller trips to be accomplished by foot.
Some expressed joy at discovering an alternative method of commuting to work, and one that foregoes the hassle of parking. Others shared observations on their town’s architecture as they waited for the bus, something they previously neglected to appreciate
Yet, the hashtag was also replete with confessions that the week would, to many participants’ regret, not be completed car-free. Insufficient transit coverage and frequencies, the absence of safe bicycling and walking infrastructure, and environments hostile to people outside of cars, like stroads, were commonly cited as reasons to transition from car free to “car lite,” as one parent put it.
Notably, many of the trips that resulted in participants failing the challenge involved transporting children. On X, formerly known as Twitter, a North Carolina parent shared their attempts at transporting their kid to karate:
Tonight was kid’s karate. Mon we took @GoDurhamTransit 11B, walked 1 mi, and got a lift home. Today I was going to @Uber, but round trip cost 6x the lesson. Also, I waited too long and would have been late. So my week will carry on car-light #WeekWithoutDriving pic.twitter.com/GVOa7N4jtT
— David Bradway @davidbradway@gladtech.social (@davidbradway) October 4, 2023
In 2021, Sam Zimbabwe, the Director of Seattle’s Department of Transportation (SDOT) expressed similar frustrations. “The biggest challenge was family activities that included my kids,” they shared after that year’s Week Without Driving. “Each of my unavoidable car trips during the week involved the kids. One drop off at school when my wife had to go to her office, and one soccer practice. We did manage to carpool to a soccer game and a practice, while I biked. Both of these trips could have been accomplished on transit, but would have taken a long time (up to an hour longer than a 10-minute car trip).”
Zimbabwe likewise shared that despite living only 2.5 miles from their child’s geographically assigned public school, without school bus service, the only feasible option was to drive. Their experiences not only dovetail with recent studies that reveal most car trips total under five miles, but also bring attention to the increasing difficulties of transporting children to school.
Getting to School Didn’t Always Involve a Car
According to the National Center for Safe Routes to School, in 1969, 48% of children five to 14 years of age walked or bicycled to school. By 2009, the percentage would drop to 13. Even though the number has increased since, hovering around 17% in 2016, many of the barriers expressed in the 2009 survey persist.
In that same survey, the supermajority of parents identified distance to school as the primary barrier. Traffic-related danger, as the study put it, came in second. For comparison, 31% of students between kindergarten and eighth grade lived within one mile of school in 2009, down from 41% in 1969. Of those children who live within one mile of school, only 35% walked or biked, compared to the 89% who walked or biked in 1969.
Distance may be a barrier, but the National Center identifies more factors at play. In the last two decades, many states mandated minimum acreage for school properties. While this primarily affected the construction of new schools, cheaper land and “school funding formulas that favor new construction over renovation of existing schools” meant that an increasing number of schools have found themselves situated on the fringes of the communities they serve. Coupled with restrictive zoning codes and development patterns that segregate structures and corridors by use, a decreasing number of students are able to live less than a mile from school—and even those who do have no safe way of walking there.
An aerial view of a school in Dayton, Ohio, has gone viral for exemplifying the type of planning that robs students of the option to walk or bike to school. Dayton SMART Elementary is encircled by a highway ramp for State Route 35, and despite homes and businesses being as little as four minutes away by foot, the walk involves dodging cars, buses, and eventually intersecting with a wide arterial road.
“For students unlucky enough to live on the north side of the highway, they face a convoluted way across the highway ramp, under an overpass, and then under the highway in a dimly lit space,” Ben Abramson added in an article for Strong Towns about the school.
The asphalt moat encasing Dayton SMART Elementary will likely remain for some time, but parents across the country are pushing back against these emerging norms by at least trying to shift the culture around school transportation. For example, from Massachusetts to Oregon, bike pools are transporting kids to school on two wheels.
“Kids love the idea of getting themselves places and not needing to rely on their parents, and parents love the sudden freedom they find when they no longer have to fight the lines to drop their kids off in the car,” said Jonathan Duncan, a Strong Towns advocate who started a bike pool in his home of Springville, Utah. “The children are empowered; the parents are liberated.”
Furthermore, many of the bike pools have emerged in suburban communities and small towns, those most likely to have schools located on their perimeters. Getting kids walking and biking not only for recreation but for transportation is likely to stay with them as they age. Even so, Duncan noted that some of his former bike poolers have graduated to motorized vehicles. Like with the #WeekWithoutDriving, however, the hope is that the seed was planted.
Read: “We Sold Our Car Five Years Ago. Here’s Why It Works for Us,” the first piece in a three-part series about the realities and rewards of living without a car.
Asia (pronounced “ah-sha”) Mieleszko serves as a Staff Writer for Strong Towns. A dilettante urbanist since adolescence, she's excited to convert a lifetime of ad-hoc volunteerism into a career. Her unconventional background includes directing a Ukrainian folk choir, pioneering synaesthetic performances, photographing festivals, designing websites, teaching, and ghostwriting. She can be found wherever Wi-Fi is reliable, typically along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.