{"id":17054,"date":"2016-09-14T17:49:29","date_gmt":"2016-09-14T17:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=17054"},"modified":"2016-09-14T17:49:29","modified_gmt":"2016-09-14T17:49:29","slug":"how-does-one-love-public-transportation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=17054","title":{"rendered":"How does one love public transportation?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"train\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“I love public transportation.”<\/p>\n

— Clint Eastwood in the film “In the Line of Fire”<\/strong><\/p>\n

HANNOVER, Germany —<\/strong> I love public transportation, too.<\/p>\n

A concern I’ve had since living in Amarillo for the past 21 years is that it isn’t terribly available in the neighborhood where my wife and I reside.<\/p>\n

We have no train service. The bus system doesn’t actually reach the farthest corners of the city; thus, we’re stuck.<\/p>\n

Well, we have developed a taste for it in Europe, where they’ve perfected the system to the letter.<\/p>\n

We traveled from Nuremberg, Germany to Amsterdam, The Netherlands the other day in about six hours. We returned from Amsterdam to Nuremberg, but it took a bit longer. Why? Because we took a different route, changing trains in Hannover.<\/p>\n

I have to say that the Germans — and the Dutch — know how to make the trains run on time.<\/p>\n

The weather was perfect on both trips. So,\u00a0we didn’t have any rain washouts, or any high winds, or fog … the kinds of conditions that can impede public transportation.<\/p>\n

We stopped about eight times on both legs of our journey. We’d pull into the station, sit there for, oh about two, maybe three minutes, then depart — right on schedule!<\/p>\n

The longest stop was for 12 minutes, at the first station in Germany on the trip back from The Netherlands; they had to change the crews and the engine. No sweat, man! We were rolling at precisely the correct time.<\/p>\n

It’s a high-speed rail system. We clocked one leg of the trip to Amsterdam at about 165 mph; I did some quick math when I saw the screen that had the speed posted at 272 kilometers per hour<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Are we going to get this kind of rail service in the United States of America? I don’t know. I keep hearing once every three or four years about ideas to build a bullet rail line between Houston and the Metroplex.<\/p>\n

One big problem? Condemning all that private land between the cities to make room for the public rail right-of-way.<\/p>\n

When it’s done well, I have to agree with Clint Eastwood’s character.<\/p>\n

I do love public transportation.<\/p>\n\n

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“I love public transportation.” — Clint Eastwood in the film “In the Line of Fire” HANNOVER, Germany — I love public transportation, too. A concern I’ve had since living in Amarillo for the past 21 years is that it isn’t terribly available in the neighborhood where my wife and I reside. We have no train … Continue reading How does one love public transportation?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6573,6572,6574],"class_list":["post-17054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","tag-bus-travel","tag-public-transportation","tag-train-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17056,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17054\/revisions\/17056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}