Is there a tuning file I can make that would stop kids from riding bikes home from school etc? It's nice for speed's sake, but it sorta feels like cheating when I haven't even bought them a bike/I want to save funds before I do.

Hmm. Are we talking about your actively played sim children, the inactives in town, or both? Actives will take the school bus home unless you have that deactivated on them for other reasons. But how do you expect them to get home without either of these two? The only alternatives I can think of are taxis (these are less cheaty than bikes if they aren't made to pay a fare?) or implementing a subway system -- that I can help with, at least I think so because right now I can't remember if unaccompanied children can even use the subway, but it may not be what you had in mind.

Or did you intend for the kids to walk to and from school? Not sure there is a way to make that happen if they live a considerable distance from the school lot unless you deactivate vehicular routing across the entire world.

igazor: I actually forgot actives take the bus from school as well (embarrassing--I've been spending too much time fussing over stuff in build/buy mode and not enough in live mode ._.;;), but as far as commuting elsewhere goes I was thinking along the lines of taxis/walking depending on the distance.

If their within a distance of 10 (however the game uses that don't know) they will walk (but most likely run) to their destination if you want them to use taxi's get rid of their bicycles but the game will still use taxi bikes for inactive children.

Almost forgot there is an XML for changing the distance but ti doesn't seem to have any affect no matter what I change the distance to they still seem to use the original default distance.

Not certain if this will help but will add to igazor's response:

In Retuner by object>Subway>Travel To> there is an option to allow species>by default there are 10 species that are true by default. Most of those are animals. Since I discovered those options I've been able to stop animals from using the Subway.

The Human Child default is False. I have this set to True so my children take the subway. Allow Autonomous should be set to True. I can not remember if that is the default setting though.

When bicycles are in a childs inventory or on the bike rack, if the setting for "make preferred vehicle" is True the kids will use their bikes. There are multiple settings in Retuner>by Object>Bicycle.

@brappl - That is helpful because I forgot about the object menus to allow children to use subways autonomously or otherwise. Though not sure if the OP wants this.

What I don't know how to do, if it's possible, is stop the game from issuing free temporary cheap bicycles to kids who don't already own one which is what seems to be the annoyance reported. Much like the scooters that mysteriously appear in WA worlds when the sim doesn't have a car to get around and they do not own their own scooter.

Thank you all for your input--I'll have to start poking around and see what I prefer now that I at least know what I'm looking for in a lot of cases.

Just chiming in here, though it looks like all was answered. My active kids always take the bus home autonomously unless they have after school activities. They even take a bus when going to someones home after school. I hate the bikes for random travel too, like in Bridgeport I've had the poor kids ride their bikes all the way from school to their fancy homes across the bay. (that's a far piece even from the subway to many of those homes!) They often auto use the subways too though, so I don't think it's banned for kid use unaccompanied. Least not in my games. (Bridgeport is the only place I have that has subways though.) I only have 5 towns so far, not counting Uni. I sometimes teleport kids home if they get too close to curfew while visiting somewhere, right into their bedrooms and put them to bed! LOL. easy peasy.

Curfews my towns have no curfews I let them run wild in the streets 3:)