Kids riding the T

[mzrowan]

I found myself wondering the other day if the MBTA (the local mass transit authority) had a policy about the minimum age of unaccompanied minors, the way inter-city transit companies do. I can't find anything explicit on their website, but their fare structure is: up to two children 11 and under ride free with an adult; discounted passes for

Comments

[cos]

My brother and I used to ride an MBTA bus to school starting when I was in 5th grade and he was in 4th - we'd just moved further away from the elementary school we'd been attending, but didn't want to switch schools. As I recall, kids younger than us also sometimes rode the bus, and nobody considered it unusual at the time - not us, not our parents, not bus drivers, not other passengers.

[angrykat]

I have been traveling the TTC unaccompanied since I was 8 before the invention of cell phones. I traveled with my sister.

Maybe traveling in pairs or groups of kids is safer?

[ceo]

Oh, and unrelated to public transit, I think I was 12 when I started riding my old 1-speed Schwinn StingRay the nearly 4 miles to a hobby shop in Bedford to buy model kits.

[miss_chance]

I have a clear memory of standing up on tippy-toes to put my change in the fare-box when my sister and I took the bus in Baltimore. We had just moved to Baltimore City from a far less urban area (traded a creek in our backyard for a museum of art). I was 5 or 6, and my sister was 7 or 8, and we were taking the bus downtown to walk around the Inner Harbor area.

But I'm pretty sure that many things that happened in my upbringing were off the bell-curve in one direction or another.

[gosling]

Late. It depends on the maturity of the kid, of course, but my sister and I certainly walked home from school (which was about a mile and included crossing a very busy street) when we were seven and ten respectively. This was in England, but I don't think it was that different here then. People have gotten really paranoid about the capacity of kids for independence and responsibility. (That said, there are kids who aren't mature enough at thirteen.)