PVDtoDEL

I don't know if this is new, but today I was on Acela Express, and I noticed a poster which looked like:

If you SEE something wrong on the train or at the station,
Then you should TELL the right authorities.
Please report suspicious activity.
Call the police at 1-800-331-0008.

(DHS logo) Transportation Amtrak
Security
Administration

It looks like the TSA is taking over the rails as well.

nachtnebel

yes they have their noses sniffing on the amtrak. My significant other was accompanying my daughter up the coastal starlight amtrak (San Diego to Seattle) and ran into a VIPR team in Albany Oregon, with dogs. Dogs are ok. I fully expect them to expand their strip searchs and gropes to this as well. They want their fingers up our butts in the worst possible way.

Upstate

They like to poke their fingers in occasionally, but they can never do like they can with the airport. At my stop there are usually less than 10 people boarding or getting off of a once each direction per day train. There is way too many of these little stops to actually close up the network.

motorguy

Let's encourage the TSA to do railroads. There are more people to harass (good for the TSA). And there is less likelihood that a mistake could lead to lots of casualties. And I don't ride on trains.

nachtnebel

Really? How does that work? do they come on the train or just abuse the people getting on? Is it the enhanced patdown, balls to the wall and full frontal on females, etc? This is annoying. There's a special place in hell reserved for these people.

I can't believe folks are putting up with this. we are living in a national nightmare and there's no reason for it. This is NOT being done against moslem terrorists. This is being done against US.

ghostrider10

Except for those of us trying to "boycott" the TSA by taking the train instead of flying

CubsFanJohn

I don't ride Amtrak but I do occassionaly ride the Chicago Commuter Trains and at the Amtrak Depot I have seen the TSA ONCE in like 7 years and this was a few years ago.

pmocek

Could you please go into more detail about what they saw? I traveled that route a few weeks ago and will be doing it again in next month.

Note that Amtrak's policy is that passengers who decline to consent to a search of their belongings upon random selection for such will be denied access to trains and will be given a full refund:

Upstate

They don't do screenings, they mainly just walk around the bigger stations and act like they are working. If there is actually a problem Amtrak Police are there with real police authority and guns.

n4zhg

They are more professional than TSA, but that ain't saying much. Particularly when you have to deal with one who got told your insulin is a street drug.

nachtnebel

The VIPR team was on the platform only, perhaps in the depot too but my SO & daughter were already on the train having boarded in CA. They had dogs sniffing around the passersby, and that seemed to be it. They didn't see any other searching going on at the platform, but again, they couldn't see into the station itself. The agents didn't come onto the train.

Getting bags randomly searched is annoying ( as well as unConstitutional, no matter what the federal judiciary lackeys say--they deny what's in black and white to deprive us of our liberties and augment federal power). However, those searches can be lived with. But getting groped in your private areas or strip searched is completely unacceptable, it is absolutely criminal for them to do it, and we will never submit to it. That's why they/we take the train instead of flying.

ghostrider10

Of course it might just be a matter of time before they get money to deploy mobile bksx to scan everything. You know it will happen right after a "hairspray aerosol can" incident on a northeastern corridor train. One of the hopes is that Amtrak Police themselves as real LEOs will put up a good turf war with the TSA (because you wonder who's paying for the "required" VIPR teams: is it the state, the railroad owners, or Amtrak?). The other thing is that attacking the actual pax compartment makes for a bad target because it will only affect a single car and it would be hard to induce additional casualties other than just within that car. The LEAs working on behalf of the railroad owners are more interested in equipment/signal/track sabotage, which is a more likely and easy attack vector (and has way more potential to cause mass casualties).

nachtnebel

I've heard that the VIPR teams are requested by whatever agency invites them in and the propaganda earlier this year indicated they were in high demand and overbooked by local agencies that wanted them to show up. Perhaps with bad TSA press this may slow down.

On the Coastal Starlight that we take, the VIPR inspections are ludicrous: there are a couple of thousands of miles of track that can be sabotaged with impunity, including trestles over ravines etc, signals, none of which are monitored in any way. The VIPRs show up, do their hit and run and go away thinking they accomplished something. A more useful expenditure of funds would be to train and arm the crew on the train....

mersk862

I took Amtrak earlier this week from Rhode Island to New Jersey. It took me 15 minutes to get to Kingston Station from my hotel (versus about 40 minutes to get to PVD), was a 4 hour train ride in Business Class on the NortheastDirect (got to the station 5 minutes before departure), and was home 10 minutes after getting off my train in MetroPark (takes about 25 minutes to get home from EWR). Add in the hour long-flight and getting to the airport 45 minutes before departure and the time came out pretty much even.

Nicest thing was showing up 5 minutes before departure, getting right on the train and not having to deal with any TSA idiocy during the trip - no taking my shoes off, Kippie bag out, freedom gropes, AITs, etc. Show up, get on and get off...as painless as possible. After this trip, I'm now refusing to fly in the NE Corridor - I'll just use Amtrak instead to go between New Jersey and wherever I need to be in the NE Corridor. I'd be stupid not too, especially when MetroPark is all of 10 minutes away and has plenty of trains including Acelas.

PVDtoDEL

There was a VIPR team at Metro-Park when I got off last Tuesday.