How safe are U.S. subways?

Published 8 April 2010

In a report last year, the GAO said: “Certain characteristics of mass transit systems, such as multiple access points and limited barriers to access, make them inherently vulnerable to terrorist attack and therefore difficult to secure; high ridership, expensive infrastructure, economic importance, and location in large metropolitan areas or tourist destinations also make them attractive targets for terrorists because of the potential for mass casualties and economic damage”

 

Here is a depressing list: A sarin gas attack on Japan’s subway system in 1995. A foiled subway terror plot in New York City. Attacks on underground trains in London in 2005. The twin suicide bombings in Moscow.

 

Terrorists have repeatedly made underground transit systems a target of their planned attacks. Still, the Center for Public Integrity’s John Solomon writes that the security of U.S. subway systems remains an open question. Despite more than $1 billion spent by Washington to protect public transit in recent years, U.S. subway systems are only now starting to address threats that have been known for years.

The bombings a few days ago of two Moscow commuter trains, killing more than three dozen, may add urgency to a problem that security experts say has taken a back seat to airline safety.

New York City’s subway system, the country’s largest, remains “behind schedule and over budget” on many of its security upgrades and has run out of money to fully deploy its much ballyhooed project begun nearly five years ago to create an electronic anti-terrorism surveillance system, according to a little-noticed audit released two months ago by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.

New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority has not deployed the full suite of cameras and monitors in its subway tunnels from a project it began in summer 2005 even though it has already spent $461 million, well more than the original $265 million price tag, the audit found. Instead, the city has been locked up in court for nearly a year over lawsuits and counter-lawsuits involving the main contractor for the project, Lockheed Martin Corporation.

MTA “acknowledges that the remaining resources for this project are insufficient to achieve the full functionality that was contemplated under the original contractor,” the comptroller’s audit declared in January. “Instead, the MTA has begun pursuing a short-term goal of achieving the maximum operational capability with the remaining funds.”

Solomon writes that the electronic surveillance project fits a pattern. Overall, the New York subway system’s security upgrade program remains “behind schedule” and overbudget on many of its initial projects, ranging from 19 months to more than 50 months behind. And the cost for the upgrades has ballooned from $591 million to $743 million, the report said.

The lagging progress in the Big Apple is magnified by revelations last year that authorities foiled an al Qaeda inspired plot to blow up the New York subway