While the system has been well maintained and updated over the years, it still shows evidence that certain sections are older than others. This system is made up of a mixture of buses and trains that connect people to locations in DC, Maryland, and Virginia. An example of such a situation can be found in the transportation system in Washington DC. "The Aging of Public Transportation Systems" by Matthew Minerd (2013)Īs cities develop, their public transportation systems often show signs of aging that are mixed with aspects that are quite up-to-date. If we have once seen, “the day is ours, and what the day has shown. But during the first nineteen months of my life I had caught glimpses of broad, green fields, a luminous sky, trees and flowers which the darkness that followed could not wholly blot out. Gradually I got used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me and forgot that it had ever been different, until she came-my teacher-who was to set my spirit free. But, except for these fleeting memories, if, indeed, they be memories, it all seems very unreal, like a nightmare. I especially remember the tenderness with which my mother tried to soothe me in my wailing hours of fret and pain, and the agony and bewilderment with which I awoke after a tossing half sleep, and turned my eyes, so dry and hot, to the wall away from the once-loved light, which came to me dim and yet more dim each day. I fancy I still have confused recollections of that illness. There was great rejoicing in the family that morning, but no one, not even the doctor, knew that I should never see or hear again. Early one morning, however, the fever left me as suddenly and mysteriously as it had come. They called it acute congestion of the stomach and brain. Then, in the dreary month of February, came the illness that closed my eyes and ears and plunged me into the unconsciousness of a newborn baby.
One brief spring, musical with the song of robin and mockingbird, one summer rich in fruit and roses, one autumn of gold and crimson sped by and left their gifts at the feet of an eager, delighted child. The impulse gone, I fell down and cried for her to take me up in her arms. I slipped from my mother's lap and almost ran toward them. My mother had just taken me out of the bathtub and was holding me in her lap, when I was suddenly attracted by the flickering shadows of leaves that danced in the sunlight on the smooth floor. They tell me I walked the day I was a year old. I ceased making the sound "wah-wah" only when I learned to spell the word. It was the word "water," and I continued to make some sound for that word after all other speech was lost. Even after my illness I remembered one of the words I had learned in these early months. At six months I could pipe out "How d'ye," and one day I attracted every one's attention by saying "Tea, tea, tea" quite plainly. Everything that I saw other people do I insisted upon imitating. I am told that while I was still in long dresses I showed many signs of an eager, self-asserting disposition. Adapted from The Story of My Life by Helen Keller (1903)