Securing Mass Transit Against Terrorists Is Tricky

After terrorists bombed four crowded commuter trains in Madrid this spring, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge summoned leaders of the U.S. mass transit industry to his hilltop complex overlooking the capital.

“We need to make sure your systems are secure,” Ridge said, according to a participant at the gathering. “Shall we do it in the same way we did the airports?”

The transit officials were aghast. Checking for shoe bombs at subway turnstiles or running backpacks through X-ray machines at bus stops would paralyze a vital element of the transportation system.

The good news was that Ridge wasn’t making a serious proposal, but telling an inside joke to emphasize that he knew that techniques used to tighten security for air travel were impractical for mass transit.

The bad news was that neither he nor members of his audience had a good alternative.

After two years of intense focus on airline security, the government is turning to mass transit systems and Amtrak passenger trains. But no easy, quick, inexpensive or wholly effective answers are in sight. And industry officials and some key lawmakers contend that the administration is still underestimating the risks; they have called for at least $5 billion in federal funding for transit security.

Americans take more than 11 million trips a day by bus, train and subway, compared with 1.8 million by air. Yet Washington has spent only about half a cent for each rider on ground transit security since the Sept. 11 attacks, compared with more than $9 for each airline passenger, according to congressional estimates.

“A number of us lose a lot of sleep being concerned about what may happen and how well we are equipped to deal with it,” said Richard White, general manager of the Metro transit operation in Washington. “Those of us who are in the operating world, in the real-life, here-and-now world, would like to see things happen faster.”

Some options being considered by the Bush administration to help protect passenger trains and other transit systems include research to develop explosives detection technology for subways, and regular screening of Amtrak passengers and baggage at stations or aboard trains in special security cars.

The administration has issued basic security standards for public transit, and conducted vulnerability assessments focused on the largest systems. The standards call for each system to develop its own security plan in consultation with federal authorities.

Most systems, especially large ones such as those in New York or Los Angeles, were already taking action.

Many of them have launched publicity campaigns to encourage commuters to report abandoned or suspicious bags and parcels. Metal trash cans that could serve as hiding places for bombs have been removed, or replaced with hardened containers that can direct a blast upwards and away from patrons. Many systems now have dog teams that can detect explosives.

“A lot of it is good, old-fashioned crime prevention,” said Capt. Dan Finkelstein of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, who serves as police chief of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The system has received a $4.5-million Homeland Security grant, which is being used to install security cameras and make other improvements.

But senior Republican and Democratic senators have concluded that the $115 million the federal government has committed to transit security nationally since the Sept. 11 attacks is insufficient.

They are pushing legislation to create a line item in the budget for local transit security needs, from surveillance cameras to air-quality monitors that can detect chemical toxins. The federal government subsidizes building transit systems, but not security costs. The administration has not taken a position on the $5.2-billion proposal.

The March 11 bombings in Madrid showed that a coordinated attack on commuters could have dramatic political consequences. Ten bombs planted on four commuter trains killed 191 people during the morning rush hour. A Spanish government that backed the U.S.-led war in Iraq was defeated at the polls.

“What happened in Spain could happen here; what happens on the West Bank could happen here,” said Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.). “It’s something we should not and cannot ignore.”

Shelby, a former Intelligence Committee chairman, is an author of the Senate transit security plan. The bill was approved last month by the Banking Committee, which he heads and which has jurisdiction over transit.

Terrorists have a track record of attacking transit systems around the world, including a religious cult’s 1995 sarin nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway, the Irish Republican Army’s targeting of British rail systems and Palestinian suicide attacks on city buses in Israel.

In the United States, there have been close calls.

Late one night in the summer of 1997, a man flagged down a police car in Brooklyn. Using hand gestures and speaking in broken English, he told an incredible tale. His roommates, Palestinian immigrants from Jordan, were plotting a bomb attack on the busy Atlantic Avenue subway station, he said.

Police raided the apartment and found a powerful suicide bomb. Two men were arrested and ultimately convicted in the plot, which was never tied to a terrorist group. The main plotter testified that he wanted to kill as many Jews as possible. And police said they thought he was only hours away from carrying out that threat.

“We felt the subways were a prime target,” said Jerome Hauer, who was head of emergency management for New York City at the time. “I think the greatest threat to subways is still suicide bombers.”

More recently, the captured mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, told interrogators that Al Qaeda had planned to attack the Washington subway system.

“We had that information passed on to us,” said White, head of the D.C.-area transit system. “It certainly gets us to understand in vivid terms what the possibilities are.”

The open access that is essential for public transportation also could make it relatively easy to attack, and hard to defend.

“In many respects, it’s a much more difficult issue than aviation,” said Brian Michael Jenkins, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp. think tank. The government “is still coming up to speed on it.”

Conflicting lines of authority have complicated Washington’s response, industry and congressional officials say.

The Transportation Security Administration, part of Homeland Security, is nominally in charge of securing transit. But much of the government’s expertise actually resides with the Federal Transit Administration, a Transportation Department agency.

Although the industry has had a good working relationship with the Federal Transit Administration, Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration had to learn the basics even as they contended with distractions, said William W. Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Assn., an industry trade group.

“I don’t want to leave the impression that they were uncaring or unwilling to work, but the fact of the matter is that they had other priorities,” Millar said. “We didn’t get attention that could have been helpful.”

Homeland Security and the Federal Transit Administration haven’t formally outlined their roles and responsibilities, despite congressional urging.

Administration officials reject criticism of the federal response.

“We have pursued increased rail transit security no less vigorously than air travel security,” Robert Jamison, deputy administrator of the Federal Transit Administration, said in congressional testimony this year.

The Madrid attacks were no revelation for U.S. officials, said Asa Hutchinson, the Homeland Security undersecretary responsible for protecting transportation. “Our security measures preceded Madrid,” he recently told reporters.

But Millar said local systems were still bearing most of the responsibility, as well as the cost. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the systems have spent $1.7 billion of their own funds on security improvements.

“The high and mighty say good things, and they want to [help], but getting the money delivered has been a problem,” he said.