USA Today
February 18, 2007
by Mimi Hall

"These are ripe, easy targets," says Senate banking and urban affairs committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn. "Commuters shouldn't have to play Russian roulette when they get on the train in the morning."

Dodd became chairman of the panel when Democrats took control of Congress on Jan. 4. His committee has approved legislation authorizing $3.5 billion over the next three years on transit security. The committee oversees mass transit.

The House Homeland Security Committee also is holding hearings. Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., says his panel's legislation will mandate more training for transit workers, whistle-blower protection for those who reveal security lapses, increased screening at stations and federal grants for mass-transit security.

Thompson says there's no way to screen everyone who uses the nation's transit systems. However, "given the number of people who travel every day on our rail system, we just can't ignore it any longer," he says.

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Kip Hawley, head of the Department of Homeland Security's Transportation Security Administration (TSA), says the funding disparity is not what it seems because aviation security is funded entirely by the federal government and transit security is funded largely by industries and local governments.

The TSA is just "as concerned with stopping (a transit attack) as we are with an aviation threat," he says.

Subway operators, counterterrorism experts and mayors say it's about time Congress focused on transit security after five years of massive government spending on aviation security. "Transit has been drastically short-changed," says Elliot Sander, director of New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority. "The absence of adequate federal funding for transit security is putting transit in a place where it has to make agonizing choices over ensuring passengers' safety."

Transit officials say the federal government needs to set standards for training and technology used to protect commuter rail and subway systems. They say they need more officers and bomb-sniffing dogs; more cameras and sensors; better evacuation plans and drills; and construction money to shore up tunnels, install lights and build barriers and fences for rail yards.

"No sector of our transportation network has been more neglected when it comes to security than transit," Warren George, president of the 180,000-member Amalgamated Transit Union, told the Senate this month. "The deficiency in security funding for this industry is staggering."

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., former chairman of the banking committee, calls Homeland Security's investment in transit security "woefully inadequate."

Despite plots against New York's subway and terrorist attacks on transit systems in Madrid, London and Mumbai, India, the government has sunk $24 billion into aviation security and less than $500 million into transit security since 9/11, according to the Senate banking committee.

"This is not an appropriate balance," Dodd says.

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