Congress Wants TSA to Secure Amtrak & Buses
 

The slide down the slippery slope continues.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...trak-and-buses

Seems some Congresscritters thinks fouling up the airports isn't enough punishment for citizens to face but want to increase TSA's presence at bus and train stations.

I hope enough sanity remains inside the beltway to put this garbage where it belongs..

Sanity? Who cares about sanity? There's $$$$ to be made and corrupt politicians and DHS/TSA folks are lining up, drooling and salivating at the up-coming payday.

I predict right here that if they actually implement this, Amtrak will be finished/bankrupt within one month as nobody in their right mind will pay more to travel by train AND arrive much later than air/car travel.

The article only mentioned it in passing but TSA, at least at some levels, would also like to take over cruise terminal security. DHS already has a presence with CBP in ports for crew and disembarking passengers but only has a minor advisory role with terminal screening of embarking passengers and crew.

Is it unreasonable to ask TSA to improve its current 95% failure rate before taking on additional responsibilities?

They can't find and retain enough qualified airport screeners, yet somehow they're going to increase their mission ten-fold?

Yeah, it's a MASSIVE profit opportunity - think of all the belts and xrays and big-ticket NoS's that's going to call for, but where's the staff going to come from? At what cost? An extra $4.50 per train/bus ticket isn't going to cover it.

Of course, they'll continue to downplay the risks of miles and miles and miles of poorly monitored railway tracks.

Another golden opportunity! We have to hire millions of TSA agents to place them every 100 feet apart to monitor every inch of railway!! ;)

I do not mind metal detectors (not the x-ray, but metal detectors) at entrance ways to the train stations but buses?


Utter stupidity!

The entire reason why people choose to take a bus or train is to avoid the stress that American airport security brings and their ethnic/racial profiling!

"an attempted bombing near a train station."

Near? Is that all it takes? Forgetting the fact that "near a train station" means the bomb was on the unsecured side before where the TSA checkpoint would be at the train station.

Recently there have been knife and gun attacks inside Shopping Malls. Why not have TSA become Mall Cops and secure all the malls?

I bet that within a half mile of all recent "terror attacks" there is a McDonalds, a Starbucks, or a 7-11. Why not have TSA secure all these places in "attack prone" neighborhoods? :rolleyes:

If they want to start overseeing buses, perhaps they should focus on the drivers before harassing the pax. Some of the drivers behind the wheel of charter buses not only shouldn't be licensed, some of them actually aren't licensed.

Of course, they'll probably concentrate on city buses and Greyhound and ignore the charter buses completely - because it's easier.

Meh. This is a whole lot of nothing.

First: all that's happened is that a bill was introduced. If it doesn't pass before Congress adjourns, it's dead. Since this is an election year, the session ends at the end of December(-ish). There's no chance this gets passed before the election, and I don't see enough political will to make this important enough for Congress to take it up during the lame-duck session.

Also, even the article notes:

So, no time to get it passed, and no money for it, either. I'd say this is just an opportunity for folks to get their name in the paper.

And who is going to man them? On most Amtrak routes, the station is un-manned and often little more than a hut.

What makes trains special? Unlike an airplane, you can't really do a lot of damage to the train itself from inside. You can do far more damage from the outside. Yet amazingly, with tens of thousands of miles of unprotected track criss-crossing the country, not a single terrorist attack.

I may be wrong, but I also think the trains most in danger of attack would not be the passenger trains, they'd be the freight trains carrying oil or other flammable or toxic substances.

I mind....

In the wake of the 7/7 attacks, the UK tried a couple of experiments with bag X-rays at London Paddington station for the Heathrow Express but quickly concluded it was impractical.

Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier just to bomb a train on the tracks or a bus on the road? I just don't see how security would prevent anything.