When one route is not enough

There is a size at which a single route stops working, and it arrives faster than people expect.

The first sign is usually geographic. Families start joining who live in the wrong direction, and the route grows a detour to collect them. The detour adds twelve minutes for everyone else, and the families at the original first stop begin to drift because leaving at 6:35 is a different proposition than leaving at 6:50.

The second sign is the group itself. Somewhere around twenty-five riders a single line becomes hard to hold together through an intersection, and the gap between the fastest and slowest riders stops being manageable by one adult at the back.

The answer to both is feeder routes: two or three separate groups that leave from different places and converge, usually on the last block before school. Each one stays small enough to feel like a group of people who know each other. The convergence is the good part. Arriving as thirty bikes is the thing everyone remembers, and you get it without any single group being thirty bikes long.

This is also the point where the thing stops fitting in one person's head. Two routes means two people who know the plan, and it is worth naming the second organizer before you need them rather than after.