Bomb-resistant trash cans may not be suitable for New York subway stations
New York congressman calls on MTA to install bomb-resistant trash cans at MTA’s more than 400 subway stations, but the transportation organizations says that the architecture of many of the rail stations make them unsuitable for such trash cans
U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner (D-New York) said Sunday that transit officials should comply with a 2004 directive from DHS and install bomb-resistant trash cans in the city’s 468 subway stations. “Explosions on the subway platform are horrific events because so many people are gathered on the platform,” said Weiner.”He said other cities including Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., have installed the bomb-resistant trash cans in their transit systems in an effort to minimize the impact of an attack such as the one that killed 191 people in Madrid in 2004. Weiner, posing next to one of the types of bomb-resistant trash cans now on the market, said the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) could pay for the new cans using some of the $1.086 billion in federal funds it has received for security improvements.
NYC Transit, a division of the MTA, said it began exploring the deployment of bomb-resistant trash cans several years ago, before the Homeland Security recommendation. “Using bomb analysis it was determined that these cans would not work in the NYC subway environment,” spokesman Paul Fleuranges said. “In our station environment with low ceilings, mezzanines above platforms, and sometimes below them (along elevated lines), bomb-resistant trash cans, which concentrate the blast force upward, would do more harm than good and cause more injury and destruction.”
He said NYC Transit discussed its position with Homeland Security and was testing see-through plastic garbage cans, which would allow police, transit workers and subway riders to see if a device is in the trash, as a means of deterrent.
