Report: Protecting Mass Transit Difficult Task

12-27-2010 • Officer.com

The government's top security officials say they are upgrading subway and rail defenses against terrorist attacks throughout the country, but a USA TODAY examination finds gaping holes, including many that may not be possible to plug. The holes in security leave travelers more vulnerable on the more than 4 billion trips they take by subway and rail each year than in the sky, where airlines carried fewer than 700 million passengers from U.S. airports last year.[...] Perhaps the only way to make subway and rail cars secure is to screen every passenger similar to what the TSA and its 50,000 screeners and some private contractors do at airports. And some passengers, such as Carl Woodin of Maple Glen, Pa., say they wouldn't mind it. He says security was poor during the 24 trips he took this year on subway, Amtrak and other trains. "I always thought that a terrorist could very easily board a New Jersey Transit or Amtrak train on the Northeast Corridor and demolish New York's Penn