It’s been happening quietly for decades: Fewer and fewer kids are walking or biking to school. The number is at about 11% today, down from about half of all kids under 15 in the 1960s. Even more staggering, back then nearly 90% of kids who lived less than a mile from school would walk or bike on a daily basis.
This shift is often chalked up to today’s parents. Anxious Generation author Jonathan Haidt frequently calls on parents to give kids more autonomy, arguing that sheltered kids are more likely to be anxious and depressed.
But there’s just one problem: Has anyone weighing in on this shift actually tried walking to school recently?
YouTuber tries walking from childhood home to elementary school; complications ensue
Evan Edinger, a wildly popular creator on YouTube and social media, recently decided to visit his hometown of Deptford, New Jersey. As an experiment, he wanted to see what it would be like to walk from his childhood home to his old elementary school—a distance of just one mile—in the year 2025.
The walk starts at the home he grew up in and the little development of homes and apartments that surrounded it.
“There’s a lot of people. It’s a really nice, safe place. But you might have noticed something pretty important seems to be missing in this safe little development,” he says. “Sidewalks.”
Indeed, Edinger begins the video by walking down the middle of his admittedly quiet street. He also notes that he can’t walk too close to the side of the road because it’s overgrown with weeds and poison ivy.
“It’s just crazy that this entire area can’t afford a single sidewalk,” he says.
Soon, he’s out of his immediate neighborhood. On a slightly bigger road, he’s forced to walk in a bike lane, right next to cars whizzing past at over 30 mph. Just minutes later, precisely eight minutes into his walk along the busy road, he encounters a metal guardrail blocking his path.
“Not only do I not have pavement, I don’t have a sidewalk. I kind of have to walk around this barrier,” he says. “This is what the township thinks children should have to do. So I guess we just have to do it, right?”
The small walking path he does have is soon blocked by a sign, and a spiderweb, to boot, and Edinger is once again forced to walk along the busy road. He then has to cross a three-way intersection with no crosswalk or traffic light before reaching his first sidewalk of the journey. Of course, that sidewalk abruptly ends after about 50 feet and he’s back to walking in the middle of the road.
Along the way, he reflects on the fact that he’s an adult man, and he truly can’t believe people might expect elementary school kids to safely complete this walk.
In the end, Edinger says of doing the walk as a kid, “It genuinely felt every single time like I could die, like it was a scary thing.”
Video strikes a nerve with parents
Edinger’s journey racked up over 2 million views on YouTube and had people racing to the comments to weigh in. It quickly became apparent that this was not just an issue in Edinger’s hometown or even New Jersey. It’s an issue that’s been getting worse all over the country:
“I feel like the US uses ‘Think about the children/protect the children’ way too often except when it would actually protect the children.”
“As someone from the UK I hear all the time how most of the US isn’t walkable and I never realised just how bad it was until now. I couldn’t imagine using a car for a walk that short.”
“As someone who used to live in non rural California, you have NO idea how tame this is compared to anything there, which really says a lot seeing how bad this already is.”
“I can’t even imagine how devastating it must be to be a wheelchair user in this type of town.”
“Keep in mind, this is what most of the US is like. Even in nicer more developed areas, sidewalks are just incredibly inconsistent. In the middle of the busy part of town you’ll see sidewalk end for maybe 10 feet for no reason. In the middle of the city, there should never be a lack of sidewalks, it’s ridiculous.”
“I’m glad someone is finally saying ‘[kids] will die’ a lot of time people say ‘get hurt’ or ‘get hit’ No we need to be more blunt and honest about it because people WILL die. We have to take this stuff seriously.”
Reasons behind America’s poor walkability
Edinger lists a lot of the reasons walkability is a problem in his hometown. For starters, he notes that in many parts of America, sidewalks are a private responsibility. Homebuilders and businesses are legally required to install a certain amount of sidewalk, but no more, and may even be responsible for their repair and upkeep.
There’s no overseeing body making sure all the sidewalks connect and are in good condition for safe walking.
There’s also the even simpler problem of budget cuts. He explains how his township recently tried to eliminate school bus service for kids living within two miles of the school, but massive public backlash forced them to rescind the policy.
But it’s even more complicated than that in the big picture. Pedestrians used to have certain rights on the roadside until the auto lobby invented a new crime: jaywalking.
Meanwhile, cars got bigger and faster and more deadly. Even walking on a sidewalk alongside a busy road isn’t particularly safe, so a lot of people avoid it. You can certainly understand why modern parents wouldn’t want their kids walking to school just feet away from pickup trucks going 50 mph on busy roads.
Positive solutions
Edinger is not the first to recognize this problem, though he did demonstrate it beautifully with drone shots and nifty camera work that showed exactly how dangerous walking to school can be.
One national program called Safe Routes to School aims to improve local infrastructure so more kids can walk and bike to school. It’s a movement that helps find funding to build sidewalks, bike lanes, and crosswalks in communities, along with lobbying at the federal level for policies that support walkability and pedestrians.
The program has been active for over 20 years and has helped over 14,000 schools. It even helped John Muir Elementary School in Seattle get up to a 43% walking and biking rate.
But there’s still a long way to go.
Getting more kids walking and biking to school will take a massive culture shift. Communities that are less hostile to pedestrians, schools that are close to the neighborhoods they serve, and yes, parents that train and trust their kids to do the walk on their own once they know the way.
But in the meantime: No, you’re not a helicopter parent if you’re too afraid to let your kid bike to school. Even a 36-year-old YouTuber found the experience more than a little harrowing.
Edinger summed it up perfectly when he recalled that his mom almost never let him walk to school for good reason: “Because of that, because of like ingraining this fear of roads into me, it made so that, well, I didn’t walk that much. But she was just trying to keep me safe in the world that she was bringing me up.”
