Rail securityThwarted train attack in France highlights U.S. rail vulnerability

Airports are protected by several layers of security, but railroad stations have minimal, if any, protective measures, and there are no security checks through which those who take the train must pass.

The attempted attack on the high-speed train from Brussels to Paris, an attack foiled by the quick courageous action of three Americans and Briton, only highlights the vulnerability to attack of U.S. rail.

The New York Times reports that lLarger stations have armed Amtrak police officers, some with bomb-sniffing dogs. At some rail hubs – Union Station in Washington, D.C., for example, and Penn Station in New York — passengers and baggage are randomly searched. At Union Station messages are appear on larg-screen monitors urging passengers who spot suspicious activity to report it. A small number of military personnel patrol Penn Station.

“Passengers failing to consent to security procedures will be denied access to trains,” Christina E. Leeds, an Amtrak spokeswoman, told the Times in an e-mail Saturday.

Major European train stations have greater presence of security personnel, but in Europe, too, security at train stations is far behind security measures implemented in European airports.

The Times notes that Amtrak has a police force of about 500 officers, and that smaller commuter rail services have their own security officers, who randomly patrol passenger cars, especially on special occasions such as concerts or sporting events.

DHS and TSA have made rail security a priority since the Madrid rail bombing in 2004 and the London underground bombing in July 2005 (see “Terrorists shift focus of attacks from air transportation to rail systems,” HSNW, 4 March 2015; and “Concerns grow about attacks on rail systems by domestic terrorists,” HSNW, 19 January 2015).

In December 2005 the TSA has set up security teams called Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response, or VIPR, squads, and they have been assigned to patrol ground transportation hubs such as train and bus stations. TSA says that the teams work with local and state and transportation officials to thwart terrorist attacks.

TSA says the teams include security inspectors, behavior detection officers, and explosives experts. The agency says there are thirty-one teams in operation, and that in 2014 they conducted more than 7,000 operations, including security patrols at train stations.

Security experts say, however, that trains remain vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Professor Arnold Barnett of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, who analyzed terrorist attacks over a 30-year period from 1982 to 2011, writes that terrorists have shifted their focus in recent years away from attacking airlines to attacking subway and rail systems. In his study — Has Successful Terror Gone to Ground? — Barnett writes that statistically significant evidence points to a growing focus of terrorist attacks against ground mass transit. The deadliest attacks in the decade 2002-2011 were against subway and commuter rail systems, taking 200 lives apiece.

Barnett notes that the statistical risk posed to travelers by criminal/terrorist acts against air and rail are minuscule, but he argues that successful acts of terror have ramifications beyond their immediate consequences. For example, many observers believe that the Madrid commuter-train bombings in 2004 changed the outcome of the Spanish national election shortly thereafter. Barnett argues that “if terrorists give weight to demonstrated success,” then the vulnerabilities illustrated by recent rail bombings from Great Britain to Sri Lanka could be precursors to further attacks. Because there is little evidence that attacks on rail systems can be thwarted while in progress, the greater terrorist interest in railroads “heightens the urgency” of intercepting terror plots in advance. Barnett concludes by noting that a planned 2009 New York subway attack was thwarted by good intelligence work, not by security measures at Times Square or Grand Central Station.

The idea of implementing screening measures, similar to those at airports, at train stations has been debated by security experts and lawmakers, but it did not go anywhere because of budgetary considerations and passengers’ objections (but it was implemented in some train stations in China; see “China implements airport-like security checks at crowded train stations,” HSNW, 3 June 2014).

Amtrak officials told the Times that before the company’s high-speed train, the Acela, began service in 2000, and airport security screening tightened in 2001, Amtrak carried only one-third of travelers between New York and Washington. Amtrak’s share of that traffic is now 75 percent. The officials say that one reason for the growth in the number of passengers choosing Amtrak is the time-consuming airport security screening.