DODGE CITY, Kan. — The people who run the city where I’ve lived for the past 20 years have taken plenty of hits of late.

Some of it is deserved. Some of it is not.

But as my wife and I have visited Dodge City for the past few days, we’ve noticed a project that could do some good here. It reminds us of a project that’s been done in Amarillo.

Rails to Trails in Amarillo was developed some years ago by converting an abandoned railroad right-of-way into a hiking and biking park complex.

We’ve discovered an abandoned rail line in Dodge City, just a few hundred yards from the RV park where we’ve stayed. It looks for all the world like the Rails to Trails park used to look as it coursed through Amarillo for slightly less than 4 miles.

Grass has overgrown the railroad ties and the rails themselves. Indeed, the neighborhood surrounding the Dodge City rail line looks a lot like the San Jacinto neighborhood that borders much of what once was a crappy old rail line running through Amarillo.

Rails to Trails remains a work in progress. I visited recently with the city parks department administrator about plans to finish a long-standing project connecting neighborhoods with hiking and biking paths; Rails to Trails is part of the unfinished work.

The park, though, gives the neighborhood along its route a much better look than it had before it was developed — and for that the city deserves high praise.

Dodge City isn’t nearly the size of Amarillo, but it has precisely the same kind of potential staring it down.

It runs along an old rail line that ought to be turned into park.