Rail security continues to receive short shrift from DHS

America’s rail system is the Rodney Dangerfield of transportation: it can’t get no respect. Is it because, beyond the New York-Washington corridor, and the San Francisco Bay Area, few rely on rail as a primary method of travel, and that there are some who see it as an effete, European manner of transport? These social prejudices, if they exist, we leave to the reader to judge for himself. Suffice it to say, not a year goes by without a chorus of loud threats to privatize or eliminate Amtrak altogether, and, as two East Coast congressmen pointed out in a letter to DHS this week, rail travel receives a disproportionately small amount of security funding—only $115 million per year.

DHS is correct is pointing out that rail is in the main a state and municipal issue. Amtrak is just one part of a massive system including everything from the New York City subway to Seattle’s light rail, and it is impossible to create a single unified approach. Technical issues abound as well: with so many entry and exit points, and with many stations nothing more than a shack in the middle of the desert, anything approaching an airport-style system, with dedicated choke points and comprehensive baggage inspection, is probably a chimera.

The current rail security strategy is based on randomness: random identification checks and random dog-sniffing. On our rail travels this weekend, we were subjected to neither. Some security experts, however, believe more could be done at a rail-friendly cost. Reston, Virginia-based ObjectVideo, for instance, recently inked a deal with Madrid, Spain’s rail system to install closed-circuit television software that allows programmers to set rules for suspicious behavior that alerts security managers. In the case of the Madrid train bombings of earlier this year, company officials believe its software would have caught the terrorists leaving their backpacks behind on the train