I have spent most of the past four months biking to and from work. I’ve loved it; it’s a great way to kick off the morning; a little fresh air, a vigorous workout, a few existential threats to focus the mind.
But since the kids have been to school, it’s been more of a twice a week pleasure that I snatch if everything goes well with getting kids up and to school; if it’s warm enough for Bun to bike, and Zam actually gets out the door and walking or skateboarding on time.
When I can’t bike, I usually take the bus. But that stinks during the school year, since there are exactly three options for the bus that runs down my street; one that I can catch and get to work half an hour early, if everyone is out the door and moving five minutes ahead of normal, which I make about 10% of the time; one that gets me to work in plenty of time (even to stop at the coffee shop), if everything goes well, which is about 80%; one that gets me there 10 minutes late. Or I drive, and pay for parking.
This isn’t really intended to be a trip through my domestic life; there’s a point here. Whenever I hear urban transit activists extol the virtues of biking to work or mass transit as viable options, I try to find out; do they have kids?
Anecdotally, most seem not to. And it shows.
On a regional politics discussion forum, one of the contributors frequently posts reviews of the various bus rides and routes she takes, taking some pride in her ability to get to places in (relatively) little time. Which makes for interesting reading, and even more interesting speculation; if she took an hour and forty minutes to get from her house to a job, using three transfers, how would get get a kid to a doctor appointment? How would she pick her kid up if he/she got sick at school? How does she get home in time to help out with homework?
Simple. She doesn’t. No kids in the picture.
I’m not saying that none of the New Urban utopianists don’t have any answers. I’m just completely bumfuzzled to think of what they’d be.
Children are inconvenient at best, and to be avoided. They merely disrupt the whole New Urban Utopian lifestyle plan. Without children, they don’t need to bear the burden of someone else being dependent on THEM.
The stretch of Excelsior Blvd immediately east of Hwy 100 is a new urban utopia. Literally, within 1/2 mile tops, you have everything necessary to survive even with kids. Grocery store, drug store, laundromat, day care, video rental, restaurants, liquor store (not NECESSARY, but desirable). About the only thing not within walking or biking distance that I can see would be a home improvement store (ACK! BIG BOX! BIG BOX! – and not necessary if you live in the condos above the retail spaces), and an electronics retailer. (medium-to-big box – and to be avoided: turn off the TV and quit using all that electricity for your technocratic addictions – pick up a book). Why, there is even indoor parking for those cretins who refuse to free themselves from the bondage of automobiledom. Oh, and the nearest library is a couple miles away.
They’re sprouting up all over. Excelsior and Grand, in Golden Valley north of 55 and west of Winnetka, up in the Elm Creek development area in Maple Grove. It just gives me the willies to think about living in those places.