Every fall, headlines warn of another “school bus driver shortage.” Districts scramble. Parents vent. Kids wait. And year after year, the fixes on offer tend to look the same: a scramble of emergency contracts, pared-back routes, or cash incentives to shift the burden onto families.
Philadelphia perhaps offers the clearest case study. Facing a persistent driver shortage, the district launched a “Parent Flat Rate” program that pays families $300 a month to drive their own kids to school. On paper, the subsidy sounded practical: fewer kids on buses means fewer drivers needed. But in reality, the only families who can take advantage are the ones who already own a car. Students who rely on transit, biking, or walking? They’re left out entirely.
Parents like Peter Kim knew that frustration firsthand. Kim checked all the boxes for eligibility except one: like 30% of the city’s residents, he didn't own a car. Instead, he biked alongside his son to school each morning, part of a small but visible group of parents who commute by bike. When Strong Towns spoke with him in 2023, Kim put it plainly: there’s no parallel incentive for parents who choose to walk, bike, or ride transit. “That option doesn’t exist,” he said. “Even if a parent wanted to do that.”
The consequences were easy to spot: clogged streets at pick-up and drop-off, more conflicts between drivers and kids on foot, fewer carpools, and the steady erosion of walking and biking as real options. In a city where traffic deaths remain stubbornly high, critics decried that this approach only deepens the danger. The risks aren’t abstract — in 2021 alone, 1,184 children were killed and more than 162,000 injured in traffic crashes in the United States, a 17% jump from the year before. On the very first day of school last year, a 12-year-old Florida girl was critically injured when her mother accidentally ran her over in a drop-off line. School systems routinely warn parents that pick-up and drop-off are the most dangerous part of a child’s day.
A Different Pivot in Charlottesville
Charlottesville, Virginia, faced the same shortage but took a different tack. Starting in 2021, the city leaned on its Safe Routes to School program to identify barriers that made walking and biking to school unsafe. With CARES Act and American Rescue Plan funds in hand, the city began rolling out “quick-build” projects: low-cost safety fixes using paint, posts, reflectors, and modular components. These weren’t flashy capital projects that take years of planning; they were simple, fast interventions that immediately changed how kids experienced the streets outside their schools.
By the time the driver shortage hit hard, Charlottesville schools had also expanded what they call “parent-responsibility zones” — areas within about a mile of each school where bus service isn’t provided and families are expected to handle transportation themselves. In many places, that kind of policy just means more cars piling into the drop-off line. But in Charlottesville, the city had already been rolling out dozens of quick-build street projects near schools: crosswalks, bollards, speed humps, and bike lanes. Those small, low-cost changes gave parents and kids real options besides driving — and they made the “parent-responsibility zone” a zone that felt safer to walk or bike through
The program has only accelerated. In 2023, Charlottesville’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) created a subcommittee specifically to recommend new quick-build sites, collaborating with city staff to push projects through at speed. Fifteen recommendations from BPAC have already been deployed or are in the design pipeline. The current 2025 list includes 67 quick-build projects slated for deployment over the year — ranging from intersection upgrades like rapid-flashing beacons and bumpouts, to temporary traffic calming experiments such as chicanes and speed tables, to lane re-striping for narrower, slower streets.
The urgency behind the effort sharpened after an October 2024 fatality at Elliott Avenue and South 1st Street. Within weeks, the city responded with a quick-build fix: upgraded signage, flashing crossing beacons, narrowed lanes, and reflective posts protecting the bike lane. Staff then worked with BPAC and even the fire department to identify dozens more candidate locations for rapid interventions in the following months.
Charlottesville’s transportation staff acknowledge that these initiatives aren’t a cure-all. But they’ve done something equally important. They’ve protected the kids who already walk and bike — and made it easier for more families to consider those options. Parents say they notice. Anecdotally, more families who live within walking or biking distance of schools are choosing those modes, at least some of the time, because the environment now signals it’s safe and expected. Drivers benefit too: clearer crossings and narrower lanes mean fewer near misses at pick-up and drop-off.
What else could you do?
Charlottesville demonstrates how smart, low-cost street interventions can protect students — and elsewhere, parents and volunteers are pursuing similar goals independently. Across the country, grassroots bike pools — sometimes called bike buses — are emerging as community-driven solutions. Parents and teachers volunteer to escort groups of students to school, ensuring safe passage while promoting active transportation and reducing congestion.
For Strong Towns advocate Jonathan Duncan, who launched one in Springville, Utah, the benefits are clear:
“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. The children are empowered; the parents are liberated.”
Better yet, bike pools tackle several issues at once. “At Cesar Chavez Elementary School in north Portland my ‘why’ was to build a strong community and revitalize a walking school bus program that had existed in the past,” Sam Balto, best recognized for his headline-sweeping bike bus in Oregon, wrote in Bike Portland a few years back. “At Alameda, my ‘why’ to start the bike bus was to reduce car trips at drop-off, which had gone way up during the pandemic because of canceled bus routes.”
School districts can’t conjure up drivers overnight. But they can choose what they reward and what they overlook. Charlottesville demonstrates what it looks like to work within means while shaping the future you want to support. Bike buses prove that families themselves are ready to change the culture.
Every community faces the school transportation challenge. The question is whether we’ll keep scrambling for the same fixes, or start building something more resilient.
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Want to learn more about creating neighborhoods where kids can thrive on their own? Join us for 3 Ways to Build a Neighborhood Where Kids Can Be Independent, a Strong Towns Local-Motive session, led by Vanessa Elias—community advisor, certified parent coach, and founder of Block Party USA. Save your spot here.
