Post photo: City Hall Heilbronn | © Shutterstock
"We'll go where we're called"
A surprising development, at least for me, is emerging among the US Republicans for the primaries 2024. Mike Pence according to a report in the New York Times (23.05.2022/XNUMX/XNUMX), has not ruled out, even against one Donald Trump to compete in the next race for the US presidency.
He rightly resented the former US President for wanting to see him on the gallows. And now he insists on officially supporting a Republican candidate in Georgia who is running against another Republican handpicked by Trump.
The relevant article from Jonathan Martin see the New York Times right here. [I may forward this article to up to ten other people; short email to me]
draft constitution
Without its own constitution, nothing will come of a European federal state. This has been the firm conviction of the constitutionalists among the European federalists from the start. And that is why they have been trying again and again for a few decades to get Europe to convene a constitutional convention that creates a common constitution for a federal state in Europe.
Since that time, the most indefatigable constitutionalists have been drafting constitutions for the benefit of the citizens of the Union. Some of the authors also dream that their draft constitutions will be adopted by individual member states and their populations.
Javier Giner put such a draft constitution into the forum the day before yesterday and will certainly be pleased if the readers of the weblog not only take note of this draft, but also comment on it. And if you like this draft constitution or if you want to support the efforts of its authors, you can also sign a corresponding petition there.
main train stations
You've been doing everything for decades to convert a full-fledged main station into a better S-Bahn station and then you're surprised that no real train stops anymore. You can understand that, but you don't have to.
Since 1945, we people from Heilbronn have not been able to ensure that both the rail connections to Würzburg and to Karlsruhe are consistently two-lane. And the connection to Mannheim has been forcing people to make involuntary stays for decades. The connection to Nuremberg was more or less shut down, let alone that this important west-east connection (Mannheim - Nuremberg) would be electrified throughout. Only the connection to Stuttgart still works, but more and more often you have to accept that the train makes a stopover at every halfway existing stop.
But even if we were able to fully reconnect Heilbronn to the railway network, we still have two more challenges. On the one hand, we voluntarily shortened the platforms — it takes 400 meters to do this — so that a fully-fledged train can no longer stop, and on the other hand we have neither adapted nor expanded the infrastructure around the main station to current needs . This means that our main station can no longer handle two S-Bahn trains at the same time, let alone an Intercity train.
A main train station today needs a full-fledged bus station in its immediate vicinity and also sufficient taxi stops and short-term parking, not to mention a direct stopping lane for vehicles of all kinds.
And since more and more commuters cycle to and from the train station, there is also a need for sufficient modern parking spaces that can also accommodate more than 50 cyclists in one train at short notice.
The whole thing could then be supplemented with appropriate shops and restaurants, so that the station would become an urban center of transport, trade and communication — a real central station!
birthday of the day
Otto Lilienthal
