Amtrak (In)Security
I had the good fortune recently to take a few days off. We decided to travel to a city a few hours away by train, a method of travel that is generally comfortable and relaxing.
Being a security guy, I couldn’t help but notice the lack of security. My ID was checked only once when heading to our destination, but not on the leg back. The guy obviously didn’t even look at it very closely and he didn’t use one of those little ultraviolet lights. My luggage wasn’t inspected at all, nor was my person. There were no metal detectors. All I noticed was a few cameras and a sign telling me to watch out for suspicious stuff.
It would have been trivial to load myself up with automatic weapons or even pack my suitcase with explosives. At a minimum, I could have destroyed the portion of the train I was on and killed everyone on it.
I got to thinking–in the post 9/11 world we live in, how could this be? Didn’t they think to secure the rail system? Wouldn’t an attack on the railway instill fear in America and be an easy target? Of course they must have thought about this. There must be other explanations.
Perhaps the intelligence indicates that the railway really isn’t a target. Perhaps Amtrak doesn’t have enough money to implement something like the airlines have, and since they haven’t been given a mandate or been taken over by the government, they haven’t done anything. Maybe it’s “in the works.” Maybe there aren’t enough resources to go around and this is at the bottom of the list.
Whatever the case, I came to realize that I really, really enjoyed the lack of security. I didn’t feel any less safe by not having my luggage swabbed. I realized that I most likely had a much higher risk of dying in the car on the way to the Amtrak station than I did by a terrorist attack on the actual train.
Would I feel differently if there had been a recent terrorist attack on a train, or if I had survived a terrorist attack anywhere? Possibly. But not having gone through that experience, I realize that fearing an attack on a train is a mostly irrational fear and a risk that may not be worth doing anything about.
Now the lack of on-board wi-fi is another matter entirely…
I’m willing to make the trade. I take the train every day. If they added the kind of security you’re talking about the cost of train travel would soar (Many more employees, a complete redesign of the boarding platform and waiting area). Currently Union station can’t handle the flow of people on and off the trains; if you add security to that and slow down the boarding process I would imagine that they’d have to cut some of the train service. Fewer people would take the trains – which would be nice – but in all probability the train would become economically unviable.
In an area with a traffic density as high as ours (which are the only places that trains make sense), you could do more damage with a personally owned vehicle loaded with explosives than you could with anything you could carry onto a train. And the existing train has much more surveillance & security. It is already against the law to even mouth off to a train operator. If the train operator has any misgivings, there will be transit police waiting at the next stop.
Please, don’t ruin my commute.
A previoyus job I had (before 9/11) required weekly flying and I grew to dislike it. After 9/11 I grew to hate it. I’ve been pulled aside because of one-way tickets, because of uncommon destinations and sometimes “just because”. I’ve had personal belongings confiscated or damaged (I lost a laptop to damage one because the screener dropped it).
I now take the train whenever possible and one primary reason is because the lack of screening makes it a far more “civilized way to travel. I’m willing to take my chances. Being treated like cattle, and criminal cattle at that, is just too obnoxious.