American families are shrinking for all sorts of reasons, but a big one is the difficulty of schlepping a lot of children around.
Now that a guy with nine children, former Rep. Sean Duffy, might be our next transportation secretary, it may be time that we start thinking about transportation policy to make big families easier.
A fundamental step would be making it easier for children to get around without having to be driven. I call it child walkability and bikeability. I wrote about this in the spring:
“It requires building sidewalks, bike trails, playgrounds and crosswalks that are safely usable by kids. We know that is possible because much of the world already does it. We have decades of evidence from the U.S. and Europe about how best to calm traffic, make sidewalks more enjoyable and mix parks and playgrounds with commercial and residential properties.”
The…
