By WILLIAM J. KOLE
Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria- Technology, training and round-the-clock vigilance are the best ways to thwart terrorists targeting public transit networks in the United States and Europe, urban transportation experts said Friday.
The heads of London’s Underground, which was targeted by suicide bombers in July, and Madrid’s rail system, which was attacked in March 2004, were trading tips with the directors of other transit systems at a conference held by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the International Association of Public Transport.
But experts conceded that subway, train and bus networks would always be potential prey for terrorists.
“The only fully secure public transit system is a closed one,” said Andrea Soehnchen of the Brussels, Belgium-based global transport association known by its acronym, UITP.
“A transportation system is a soft target. It’s an open system,” said Joseph C. Bober, chief of police for New Jersey Transit, which daily serves about 1 million commuters shuttling in and out of New York City.
Installing metal detectors and instituting airport-style mandatory baggage screening would mean “you’ve lost the whole concept of mass transit _ of moving thousands and thousands of people the way we do,” Bober said.
He said he and other officials in his department have been in touch with their counterparts in London two or three times a week to discuss security enhancements, such as New Jersey’s decision to equip its 225 transit police officers with beeper-sized radiological detectors designed to thwart an attack using a “dirty bomb.”
The Vienna conference was being held in the wake of a new warning by the U.S. Homeland Security Department urging transit systems to remain alert for possible terror attacks.
Homeland Security’s warning Wednesday highlighted suspicious activity at unidentified European subway stations last fall. It said a man was arrested in November in an unnamed European city after videotaping the interior and exterior of several subway cars and stations, including trash cans and stairwells.
Three other people were later arrested for similar activity, including two in the last four months, the U.S. agency said, describing the incidents as “indications of continued terrorist interest in mass transit systems as targets.”
Alain Caire, who heads the Paris public transit system known as RATP, dismissed the idea that people videotaping subway cars and stations posed any particular security threat. If a terrorist wanted to conduct pre-attack surveillance, he or she would be able to use a miniature camera and authorities would never know it was happening.
One million commuters daily use the Chatelet station in the heart of Paris, and some 10 million people ride the entire system each day, said Caire, whose system spends $19 million on security each year.
That underscores the “difficulty and dilemma” transit authorities face in trying to make such heavily used networks safe, said Patrick Dillenseger, another RATP official.
Soehnchen said some systems were shifting to lighter, more open stations with few places to stash an explosive device. But transit systems in many European capitals have stations in centuries-old buildings that are difficult and expensive to adapt, Caire noted.
Dillenseger criticized the U.S. focus on reinforcing bridge footings, tunnels and other transportation infrastructure to ensure they can withstand the force of an explosion, calling it a waste of taxpayers’ money.
“Terrorism isn’t against transportation _ it’s against people,” he said, contending money is better spent securing buses, train cars and stations.
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On the Net:
OSCE, http://www.osce.org
International Association of Public Transport, http://www.uitp.com