Facing Facts in America

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Washington is among the first U.S. cities to run crowds of regular people through a mass evacuation. After the July 4 fireworks show, Washington officials tested their evacuation plan by clearing 540,000 people out of the National Mall in an hour. Still, the best defense, according to many security experts, is a civilian offense. Well before the London attacks, many cities had been recruiting riders as watchdogs. IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING, posters remind passengers in New York City and Los Angeles. Last week Mayor Richard Daley deputized the people of Chicago: "If someone is wearing a winter coat in the subway, if you see someone dropping a package, it's better to call 911. That's all you have to do."

Of course, London officials had been making the same entreaties--for decades. And the campaign had gained new urgency with the Madrid bombings. Last week we were reminded that the populist strategy has its limitations. And so, the day after the bombings, London introduced controversial body-scan machines at the entrances to some subway stations. The machines see through clothing and detect anything that interferes with solar radiation reflected by people's bodies. But it will cost tens of millions of dollars to outfit every tube station. And it will, of course, do nothing to protect the sprawling bus system.

Most counterterrorism experts don't think high-tech bomb-detection solutions will ever work for public transit. Trains and buses are useful precisely because they are convenient, fast and cheap--and therefore hard to secure. That's why the oft repeated complaint that the government spends far more on aviation security than on transit is a bit of an oversimplification. It's true that the Feds have spent $18 billion on protecting planes and only $250 million exclusively on transit since 9/11. But that's partly because aviation is much easier to secure. And it's also because local officials have always picked up more of the costs for transit. When Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was asked if he would push to raise transit funding after the London bombings, he demurred.

Indeed, it's hard to know how much we should spend until we decide on our priorities for protecting the nation's transport system--something Chertoff's department has not yet made clear. "That kind of road map is still missing out of Washington," says Daniel Prieto, research director of the Homeland Security Partnership Initiative at Harvard University. Sixteen times as many Americans take public transit every day as take planes. Does that mean the spending ought to shift to those riders? On Dec. 31, the Department of Homeland Security was supposed to provide Congress with a strategic plan for transit security that would guide budget decisions. Six months have gone by, and still no plan.

In the meantime, says Tom Kelly, spokesman for New York City's transit system, it's a constant struggle to steer clear of expensive gadgetry that doesn't work. For example: "One of the first things everybody said after 9/11 is that you have to run out and buy those bomb-resistant wastebaskets [for subway platforms]," says Kelly. "But then you realize that the blast goes up. So somebody on the platform wouldn't die, but somebody on the sidewalk above would."