U.S. rail network still vulnerable to terror

Steve Johnson Reporter • E-mail

The U.S. urban transportation system remains vulnerable to an attack similar to that which rocked London Thursday morning, according to homeland security experts.

“It’s about as vulnerable as it always has been,” said Juliette Kayyem, a terrorism expert at Harvard University. What has been done, she added, is “pretty piecemeal — not part of any comprehensive effort.”

Homeland security experts say that improving commuter rail security is difficult and expensive due to the very nature of the rail systems. And absent any terrorist attack in the United States in over three years, there is little public pressure on Congress to come up with solutions.

“People are willing to put up with inconvenience every time they board an aircraft,” said Francois Boo, a terrorism expert with GlobalSecurity.org. “But if you required the same procedures every time you board a subway, every day, just to go a couple of stops, that’s different.”

Daunting challenge
Securing America’s commuter rail lines is a daunting task. Unlike airports, where passengers arrive an hour before their flight and can be funneled through security devices, rail systems have multiple entrances at each of what may be hundreds of separate rail or subway stops. And at rush hour, it’s not uncommon for thousands of commuters to be boarding several trains at once in busy hub stations such as Grand Central or Union Station in Washington.

“We cannot apply the same approaches to security in public transit that you do in aviation, because of the sheer volumes of people,” said Greg Hull, director of operations safety and security for the American Public Transportation Assoc., which represents the nation’s commuter rail and bus lines.

Rail security officials insist some progress has been made, much of it invisible to commuters, including promising new technologies using inexpensive RFID (radio frequency identification) tags and “smart” closed-circuit cameras.

Most subway and bus drivers now have two-way radios to allow them to communicate with their home base, for example, while communications systems have been upgraded to help transit workers talk directly to police and emergency rescue personnel. Transit employees, from bus drivers to custodians, are being trained to be vigilant and report suspicious behavior to supervisors. And the number of uniformed and plainclothes security officials has been increased.

New technologies, meantime, are helping improve security on the rail lines themselves and in rail yards, where trains are maintained overnight. RFID tags, for example, can be read by sensors at a distance. Embedding them in employee badges allows security guards to keep track of personnel in a busy railyard at night, and quickly focus on people who had no tags. “So you could say that guy doesn’t have the right badge or the right profile, so why is he walking around that train,” said Ken Barney, a security expert at computer giant EDS.

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