Culture
How One Suburb Made School Buses Obsolete
The key is density, and locating schools in the town's core.
When it comes to its schools, the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood, Ohio, does things the old-fashioned way. The city doesn't have a bus system for its 5,800 students, because it doesn’t need one. Its seven elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school are all within walking or biking distance of the children they serve.
In this short film from Streetfilms, planner Bryce Sylvester explains that there's never been a school bus system in the city. Lakewood's density – 51,000 people in five and a half square miles, it claims to be the densest community between New York and Chicago – is key to making the system work, as is locating schools within the core.