I walked about a mile to elementary school and about half a mile to high school. My dad did shift work, and my mom didn’t drive, so my parents never drove me. Sometimes, if it was raining, and a neighbor saw me, they’d give me a lift, but that was a handful of times. Thankfully, there was no snow! Though there was that jujube sized hail we had in high school for about ten minutes. Such excitement.
I never road a bus until I was at university and before I got a car.
I do have an extremely early memory of riding in a Red Car, that was probably when I was 2.5 to 3 yrs old. It was on Venice Blvd., because I remember passing the Helmsman statue.
My Public school was right across the street, so no hills. High school, about a mile and a half, with one smallish hill in the middle. There was a creek that needed to be crossed, the preferred route went through a small park with a cement bridge which was more scenic, and slightly shorter, than sticking to the streets.
It was a mile from our house to school, but it was in south Florida, so there was no snow and certainly no hills. My brother and I were warned not to play in the canal where an alligator was said to live.
Prior to college, the only time I walked to school was 5th through 8th grades, during which it was a three-block walk (and no hills). Otherwise, it was either a carpool or a bus, as my schools were several miles away from home.
In college, I lived in the “Lakeshore dorms” at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for all four years of my undergrad time there, and most of my classes were on Bascom Hill – it was only about a 10-minute walk from my dorm to classes, but I hiked up that hill two or three times a day, every weekday, for those four years.
Generally, I took a bus to school, but during grades 7-9, I walked about two miles, cutting through a thin hilly strip of woods, railroad tracks, and the back lot of one of the many Honeywell plants in the city. Many of us kids did this because the school population was so high that there weren’t enough busses. As a result, my neighborhood was on a bussing shift that picked us up earlier in the morning and later in the afternoon than most of the students so they could make another bus run. It was much faster to walk.
We were the tail end of the baby boom and they couldn’t build schools fast enough to handle us all. The walks were actually good for building my asthma-resistance most days.
Kindergarten and grade 1was fairly far and by school bus.
Grade 2 was 600 to 700 metres each way and we walked.
Grades 3 to 6 was half a kilometre each way and we walked.
Jr and Sr high school were across the street from each other and were about 3.5 km from home. We were bused but I often biked or walked as I was never Mr Popular and it was often preferable to the school bus.
All areas were stereotypical suburban environments in either the outskirts of Montreal or Ottawa. That was also through the’60s and '70s so there were tons of kids and all weathers.
About .6 miles to kindergarten September to March then .55 miles after we moved with the first .
1.2 miles to (new) elementary school (until I got older and–without my Mom knowing) I began cutting across the highway without going down to the distant traffic light and cut the distance down to .85 miles.
In high school (boarding) it was about a hundred yards and in college it was just down either two flights or three flights of stairs.
Finally in grad school I was back to walking about 1.5 miles (no car or bike).
In 1948 I started kindergarten. We lived almost exactly from the school. I walked both to and from school every day. The road was 2 lane and paved but narrow with wide deep drains on either side - it was lined with rocks. Mornings were uphill, but early afternoons were downhill.
Sometimes I would walk in the orange grove that lined the west side of the road. Much safer, but I was probably more interested in the wildlife such as lizards that lived along the edge of the trees.
Having a child do this today would be grounds for child protection intervention today, but this was pretty normal when I was a kid.
Elementary School - 5 blocks.
Junior High - about 10 blocks. I could have taken a bus, but the nearest bus stop going in that direction was at my school. The Long Island Expressway was in the way, and the first bridge to the eastbound side was at my school.
High school - about 30 blocks. The school was the other direction, so I took the bus there after a 2 block walk. Going home in 10th grade I took another bus, but 11th and 12th grades I almost always walked, either with a friend or by myself.
We had bus passes for normal New York City buses, so missing a bus was not an issue.
This made me laugh. One day, I had started my walk home from school when the Civil Defense (tornado) siren let loose. Odd, I thought, they did their monthly test earlier today. Then I realized that obviously one of the towers hadn’t functioned properly and they had fixed it and were running the sound again. I knew about this stuff because my dad had told me that’s what they would do. He worked for the city and knew all manner of stuff.
When I arrived home, I found my mother in a total panic about why it had taken me so long to arrive home. The siren was NOT a test.
I lived the first 10 years of my life in Toledo OH, in the vicinity of the Dorr St.- Reynolds RD. area. Very close to Rodgers High School. In 4th and 5th grade I walked about a 1/2 mile or more to Glann elementary school every day.
It didn’t seem like a sketchy neighborhood at the time but looking back, it was a route with lots of opportunity for misadventure. One time we were taking our regular route through a lot used by a construction company when we spied a barrel with a crank on top. One of my friends turned the crank a little and I got sprayed with diesel fuel. I remember sitting in class and some kids complaining about the smell. The teacher said it was probably the building getting refueled!
I lived in a small fishing and farming village with a very tiny population of maybe 150 or so people. My Primary School was about 1km down the road from me, but my friends lived maybe three times as far away. My walk to school each day (usually alongside my siblings, or meeting up with friends as we got closer) took about ten minutes (the more distant kids took half an hour, unless they got dropped off). We didn’t have proper maintained footpaths, so it was a bit rough going, but traffic was also low so there was very little risk with walking along the side of the road.
As for snow, we did have a little, but mostly it just got very cold and frosty, where all the gutter puddles froze, so the challenge was who would be the first to smash them as we found them en route.
My High School was in another township, around 20km away, and we took the school-provided bus each day, a 40 minute journey including the multitude of stops (my stop was always first, so we got first dibs on seats).