Where’s the security on the trains??? I saw ZERO. They had better address this lack ... or they will have a Spain on their hands... mark my words.
I agree security on trains is virtually nil.
A few years ago my family and I rode the train from Chicago to Minneapolis. We were in the sleeper car. The next rooms over had what had to be 4-5 drug dealers. There was a
gun fight between drug dealers and the police at the Amtrak station in Chicago a few days after we rode the train.
Yeah, Lord knows that we can't have people travelling with a pocket knife or ((gasp)) a sidearm. Why, they might actually defend themselves!
The problem is that you simply can't monitor and screen passengers boarding a train in the same way you can screen passengers boarding an airplane.
You can't "control the space" at the entrances to a train like you can a plane, because a train has so many doors. Have you ever seen a Metro-North commuter train board at a busy stop? A 10-car train has 20 doors, a platform 900 feet long teeming with riders, and when the doors open, a rush to get in and off.
The TSA tried a few passenger-screening tests, using a detector that folks had to walk through. What's informative is that these "tests" were tried ONLY at a few stations that had a very low passenger volume. Of course, they didn't dare attempt to screen hundreds of passengers per minute at any BUSY stations, which would have resulted in frustration and tumult, as riders waited in line to pass through the machine while the trains they were waiting for arrived and then departed without them.
I have noticed a few "sniffer machines" installed at Penn Station, which I believe are there to detect the presence of common explosives. This is the only workable approach, in my opinion: to monitor and [hopefully] to intercept explosive materials as the jihadis enter the station perimeter (or move around BEFORE they get to track level). Once they're in the door of the station, it's too late, because they can do their damage even before they get on a train. If you blow up one train, another will pull in. Blow up the station, and the entire operation is out of business for a while.
Airplanes are the prime target for terrorists, of course. But they are also by far the easiest public transportation mode around which to build a ring of security. You simply can't put the same precautions in effect on trains, subways, or buses.
- John
(disclaimer: 28 years on the railroad this coming Friday)