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Just as you wouldn't literally throw a baby off a train, moving or otherwise, you probably wouldn't discard a protocol for passenger transportation that has served America and the civilized world well for more than a century and a half. I'm talking about how we daily board passenger trains with no more hindrance than getting into a personal automobile in our own driveway.
The recently foiled attack on a European passenger train in France has given rise to a number of calls for heightened security for U.S. rail passengers. Measures up to and including airline-like security have been invoked. This is a humbug.
Let's forget Amtrak long-distance for a moment, because Amtrak long-distance trains are already mired in delays that have nothing to do with security measures or the lack thereof. That leaves Amtrak corridor trains and the rest of the universe of daily commutes including commuter, light rail, and elevated and subway rapid transit. At any but the most invisible level, camera and patrol surveillance of rail facilities, heightened security of the kind immediately envisioned by government becomes delaying and disruptive.
Imagine your daily crowd of homebound commuters streaming into the station to catch the 6:32 train to Bungalow Heights. Some of you stop and buy food, newspapers (if they still exist in Gotham City), flowers for the wife, a toy for the kids, a bottle of wine. Maybe you stopped at the bank on your lunch hour and withdrew ten crisp hundred-dollar bills to put in the kids' Christmas cards this year. How much of an inconvenience or delay would you stand for if:
1. You had to be wanded and x-rayed to get onto the platform?
2. You had to be taken aside and wanded?
3. You had to be taken to a secure room and interviewed while you missed your train and two others, because that toy for your kid looked like a weapon?
4. That $1000 is suspect, maybe it's drug money? This has already happened on Amtrak.
5. Bob at the office has a drug problem, but he drives to work. Your briefcase was next to his during the morning meeting and now smells like drugs. Now you get to enjoy the lockup?
Or, conversely, TSA picked this morning to screen at your suburban stop. Will your boss understand why you missed the morning meeting? Too often and you may not have to worry about taking the train any more. Will we all be happy getting to the station an hour earlier every morning and getting home an hour or more later each night? Maybe there won't be any jobs anymore anyway, since that's where we appear headed.
Imagine that the TSA was actually competent and could pull all this off without delaying trains. Don't laugh so hard, I need you to pay attention. How much delay can the rail system endure before just falling apart? The freight railroads are already threatening to notify the FRA that they can't accept passenger trains if the Positive Train Control mandate is enforced as of January 1, 2016. Will TSA interference be the straw that broke the passenger train's back?
Last but not least, can the highways and city streets handle it? Or will overreacting by the nanny state dump so many cars on the roads that we may as well just write off the highways as well? (Giant X-ray machine at the freeway onramp, anyone?)
I've carried the examples to the extreme, but extreme is what we get of late, especially from those charged with being our public servants, not our public masters. Keep an eye on this. We may be throwing not just the baby, but everyone, off the train.
©2015 - C. A. Turek - mistertrains@gmail.com
