[lonnyk]

> What’s the problem with walking a kilometer or two

Where I grew up in New Jersey I lived 2 miles (3.2 KM) from school and I was considered close to the school. Those who lived within a 10-20 minute walk would walk. Many of us who lived further away would rely on the bus.

Edit: And this was for elementary and middle school (up to age 13). From ages 14-18 everyone was significantly further away.

[ido]

Assuming you were in a city rather than a rural area, is it because US school are larger & fewer? Nowhere in my hometown (250k mid-sized city) is more than 10-15 minutes walk from a school.

[lonnyk]

> is it because US school are larger & fewer

I don't know because I know very little about schools outside the US. My best guess would be that they vary everywhere and this isn't US specific.

> Assuming you were in a city rather than a rural area

Before I was born and when I was younger there were quite a few farms, but I didn't grow up with them. So I suppose it used to be rural and now is a suburb (in-between rural and a city). My town has about ~30k people.

There are a lot of sprawling cities (and I _think_ Boston may be one of those) where it would also be greater distances to walk to a school. ..so I'm not sure being a city is correlated to short walking distances to school.

[plopz]

New Jersey doesn't have cities that large.

[lonnyk]

I was curious so I checked. According to Wikipedia we've two over 250k and 7 over 100k!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

[kuschku]

3.2km isn’t that much, I had from age 10 on a 4.5km way to school, and we all would just cycle there, even during storms or with snow, or in 41°C heat, all year.