Non-air transit is vulnerable due to funding, experts assert

[question everything]

Non-air transit is vulnerable due to funding, experts assert

By Toby Eckert
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

February 5, 2005

WASHINGTON – While Americans have become accustomed to tighter security at U.S. airports, some lawmakers and terrorism experts say other potential targets in the nation's transportation network remain vulnerable and haven't received nearly enough attention from homeland security officials.

Richard L. Skinner, the acting inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, recently told a Senate committee that "over 90 percent of the nation's $5.3 billion annual investment in (the Transportation Security Administration) goes to aviation."


(snip)

But last year's terrorist bombing of commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, and an accidental railway chemical spill in South Carolina that killed 9 people and sickened more than 300 others last month, have left many lawmakers uneasy about the pace of security initiatives for other modes of transportation. The issue of railway security was underscored last week in Glendale when a suicidal man allegedly parked an SUV on the track, causing a Metrolink crash with two other trains that killed 11 people and wounded nearly 200.

A little-noticed section of the intelligence overhaul passed by Congress last year requires the homeland security secretary to submit a broad national strategy for transportation security to key congressional committees by April 1.



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Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050205/news_1n5homeland.html

[AndyTiedye]

1. Their Strategy for Amtrak Security is to Shut Down Amtrak

:grr:

[NEOBuckeye]

2. Yeah, and Bush and the NeoCons will have hell to pay when Peak Oil hits

We're going to be needing railways. LOTS of railways, again. That we're not even anywhere near being prepared now is a travesty AND a tragedy in the making.

I never understood why this country put so much emphasis upon air travel anyway. Yes, I know, it started here and we're proud of it, blah blah blah. But seriously, it would have been much wiser to reserve air travel for coast to coast/border to border flights (i.e. New York to Los Angeles, Detroit to Houston, etc.) and overseas international travel, and develop high speed railways for internal/interstate transport. An active network of high speed railways interchanging with light rail in cities today would make us much better prepared to handle the upcoming energy crisis. It's too bad, it seems, that SUV-crazed America will have to learn energy and resource management the hard way.

[Bridget Burke]

3. Southwest Airlines lobbied against high speed rail in Texas.

The plan was linking Houston, Dallas & San Antonio with high speed rail. It would have cut down on a lot of long, monotonous drives. But it would also have reduced intrastate air traffic--people would have preferred catching a train in downtown Houston & getting off in downtown Dallas to dealing with airports in far suburbia & being packed into planes like sardines.

Southwest won.

[NEOBuckeye]

4. Did they?

All of the airlines look like real losers as global oil reserves peak and go into decline.

http://www.energybulletin.net/3660.html
http://www.energybulletin.net/4125.html

No more oil means no more planes. But the airlines themselves will go belly up long before we completely run out of oil. So it seems that in the long run, Southwest cannot avoid its' fate.

I hold them in contempt for helping to kill travel alternatives that may have come to the aid of millions of people when they will need them the most. Bastards.