The case against driving city kids to school

By Trish Gump for the San Francisco Standard

One solution for boosting youth mental health: Make kids navigate the city. That starts with getting them out of your car and onto buses and bikes.

When my sons were 4 and 5, we moved from Marin to San Francisco. Our friends scratched their heads: Don’t most people leave SF for the suburbs when their kids enter school age?

But we believed back then, as we do now, that the best thing for our kids’ health was to live in a city where they could move around independently. Now that the boys are teenagers who confidently navigate San Francisco by bike and Muni, it’s clear we made the right choice.

As a mom, I’m intimately aware of the mental health crises facing teens. Nearly 4 in 10 American adolescents struggle with persistent sadness and hopelessness. An increasing body of evidence points to a lack of independence as a main cause, as children are afforded less freedom to get around without supervision than young people just a generation ago.

Most San Francisco children don’t travel alone because of parents’ persistent, low-level anxiety about kids getting hit by cars. It’s not unfounded. Over the past two decades, an average of 30 people per year have been killed in traffic crashes in the city, and more than 2,000 are injured. An entire family was killed this year in West Portal while waiting at a bus stop that’s often crowded with kids commuting to school.

Wanting to be proactive in supporting our boys’ mental well-being, I sought advice from health professionals when we moved to the city. They recommended providing the kids with a sense of agency over their schedules, along with opportunities to exercise their independence. We decided that biking to school would not only give our kids independence but would ensure they got some physical exercise — a win-win.

We began by biking to school with them. It was nerve-racking to ride behind our wiggly, energetic 4- and 5-year-olds on unprotected painted bike lanes, with cars impatiently zooming past. A single wrong move or the unexpected opening of a car door could have spelled disaster. We breathed a sigh of relief after each trip ended safely.

When the youngest was 8, we transitioned to letting them ride the three miles to and from school on their own. The boys were in heaven. They felt accomplished and trusted and were especially happy about stops at the candy store on the way home. This freedom allowed them to make choices — deciding routes, stopping points, and even whom to ride with — without adult input.

Despite lingering worries about cars, my partner and I were thrilled to escape the chaos of school traffic and pick-up lines. But the biggest change was in our boys. They no longer had to be dragged out of bed; they woke up early, excited to plan their routes and meet friends, arriving at school full of energy and ready to learn. The transformation was remarkable.

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