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Schumer Wants A "No-Ride List" For Our Trains
By
Garth Johnston
Published May 9, 2011
Modified May 9, 2011
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By
Garth Johnston
Published May 9, 2011
Modified May 9, 2011
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Senator Chuck Schumer, who just lurves his Sunday press conferences, yesterday called on the Department of Homeland Security and Amtrak to institute a "no-ride list" to complement the existing airline "no-fly list." His call to action came after files found at Osama bin Laden's compound suggested that Al Qaeda was planning a train attack for the tenth anniversary of 9/11. It is unclear how exactly such a system would be implemented, but Amtrak says it will review the proposal.
This is not the first time that someone has suggested increasing security on Amtrak, which last year carried 28.7 million passengers around the country. The September 11 Commission recommended in 2004 that travelers' names be checked against terror watch lists before they were allowed to board boats and trains, but the idea was never implemented.
Responding to Schumer's call, a Homeland Security official told Newsday that they'd look into it, but that "more than $1.6 billion had been spent on beefing up rail security since 2006, primarily focused on a strong police presence, inspections" and programs like the MTA's "See Something, Say Something" campaign.
According to Schumer, getting Amtrak to use the airline terror watch list could happen at "virtually no extra cost" to the federal government (at the same time he called for increased funding for track inspections and more railway security measures). And we agree that checking ticket purchases and reservations against the watch list just makes common sense. However if the idea is to start checking the ID of every passenger before they enter the train... Schumer may well have a recipe to bring our already slow rail systems to a standstill.
Right now in major stations and terminals like Penn Station, Amtrak passengers have their boarding pass and ID checked before entering the platform and most likely will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. But the nature of the train system, which unlike planes make multiple stops along a route to their destination, would make it incredibly cost inefficient for a cash strapped organization like Amtrak to have a person outside each non-major station checking IDs and tickets. On limited-stop, high-speed trains like the Acela though, we could see an argument for pre-boarding ID checks, but other lines seem a hard sell. As non-driving New Yorkers who actually ride the rails on a semi-regular basis, we hope that Amtrak and and Homeland Security think long and hard before implementing Schumer's proposal.
Part of what we love about riding the train is that we don't have to take our shoes off first.
Tagged
al-qaeda
amtrak
chuck schumer
department of homeland security
Garth Johnston
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