NYC changes up school transportation, some rough routes left for kids

[RB TexLa]

Crazy


http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/493201p-415363c.html



Joseph Merizalde has been catching a yellow bus to school since kindergarten.

But yesterday, as 116 routes were axed and hundreds more rescheduled, Joseph was told he was getting a MetroCard and instructions to navigate three city bus routes to get to school.

Normally, Joseph's 5-mile trip from his home in Co-op City to the Villa Maria Academy in Throgs Neck would be a simple 30-minute affair.

But after the reorganization, Joseph found he didn't meet the new requirements to join his friends on the yellow bus and was given his marching orders.

His furious mother was told the first-grader would have to use a MetroCard to get the BX26, where he would have to change at Bartow Ave. - crossing the busy six-lane road to reach the stop for the BX12.

[Little Wing]

1. In Japan parents send kids to school via public transport all the time

What's wrong with America?

Oh yeah, we're sexually oppressed. In Japan, man, they got EVERYTING!

I think it's because Americans don't trust themselves to speak up of a young girl is assaulted on the way to school. I know I would.

[RB TexLa]

2. Most do ride MTA, for the ones that would have to do what the kid in the story

has to do, there are school bus routes, until now.

[Little Wing]

3. Good for John Sabini (D)

There's too much cost-cutting. People call it that because they can distance themselves from what it really is. People cutting. Someone cut those routes, and sure, it's a pain in the balls for that kid to get to school. Damn I respect him, and thanks to the Newspaper, he's going to get a lot of people who know about him and will protect him, and I even thank the newspaper for reporting it.

Granted it's just one kid, and many others will be riding the same route. But why is Japan better than us? Do we really have a higher per-capita ratio of sexual molesters in New York City than Japan does in Tokyo? If so, what are we going to do about it, and when are more New Yorkers going to stand up and fight when they see some pedophile freak drag a young boy or girl away?

[Lars39]

4. Isn't Japan where there are separate train cars for women

because of all the groping from men?

[Little Wing]

6. There are bastards in every society

I will not defend those gropers, and I'm sorry it had come to that for Japanese Rail, but I suspect those gropers felt it was easy to do so because the Japanese cram so many people into their subways they have to hire strong people to push people into cars and pack them as tightly as possible. Sure, it's a pedophile's dream to be jammed up against a schoolgirl who they can fondle while the schoolgirl can do nothing about it - but the US and Canada don't have those population problems. What you're describing is a problem of a society that in my opinion is a one built on shame. It would be shameful for the girls to cry out, that's the underlying problem with Japanese trains, but it wouldn't translate over in the United States. If, in the US, a girl was fondled on a train, she'd likely fight back, and a bunch of other passengers would do some beatings before the conductor stopped it all.

Or maybe I'm just living in a fantasy world where people police themselves (Japan excluded)

[MissB]

5. The major district in our area doesn't bus most of their kids.

They either attend a neighborhood school (within walking distance) or take public transportation.