Airport Style Security for Railway Stations

[John M Upton]

Some bright spark of a civil servant in Whitehall has come up with the quite frankly riddiculous idea to introduce airport style security at mainline rail stations and on the London Underground:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/train-passengers-face-airport-style-security-002255440.html

 

A very expensive large hammer to crack a very small nut. Hopefully this is just the back of an envelope burbleings of some junior Civil Servant that has escaped into the press in the midst of silly season and will be very quickly dropped.

[chrisf]

Too true. Let the muppet who doodled this be hunted down and suspended from a window by the goolies for as long as it takes. Alternatively, why not go back to wartime and put up posters reading "Is your journey really necessary?"

 

Chris

[Oldddudders]

Many TOCs already slow down the customer flow by using gates. Not hard to imagine some extra technology being built in there. "You have a bomb in your bag, Sir? Sorry - the gates won't open!"

[Siberian Snooper]

Just imagine the pandemonium that would be caused at any of the London Termini at about 4pm if everyone had to go through security checks similar to those used on the Eurostar, before getting the train home. I think it would need the TSG in full riot gear to police it, leaving the way clear for the villains clear to perform. That's without the Tube and other stations.

 

SS

[gwrrob]

'Are you carrying a knife or gun or bomb on you sir ?' No . 'You better have these then its a madhouse on there !'

[Metr0Land]

I seem to remember many years ago in aviation circles under the heading 'use and abuse of statistics': The best way to be sure of being on a plane that doesn't have a bomb on it is to take one on board yourself, as the chances of 2 on the same plane are infinitessimally small!

[flapland]

OK I dread to think what this would do to fares

 

For just London Transport a back of fag packet calculation below

 

- 270 stations some with more than one entrance into the platforms (avg say 1.2)

- each requiring manning 18 hours a day with someone trained into detecting the difference between legitimate carrying of a small bag of fertiliser, bottle of paint stripper etc.

- Security scanner costs for a scanner over say 3 year £200k suspect a lot more

Total cost £65 million over 3 years

Staffing costs around £40k incuding employers costs, with 4 staff to cover each enterance on a shift basis equals around £155m for 3 years

Overall costs for LU over 3 years £220m oh plus third party management profit of £280m totals a cool half billion.

[Xerces Fobe2]

I hope that my favorite TOC don't make this muppet an adviser/ non-exec director!

 

XF

[Edwin_m]

Not only stupid but actively counter-productive. What better target for a potential bomber than the huge queue that will build up on the approach to security?

 

The difference with aircraft is not only that boardings at airports are fewer and more controlled, but also that due to structure and pressurisation a small bomb or even a gunshot can quite easily bring down even a large plane and therefore kill several hundred. As seen in Madrid and London a device on a train can cause multiple casualties but detonating it in a crowded area (such as a security queue) would probably cause more.

 

Hopefully even our dimmest train operators will realise this, or at least pay attention to how much revenue they would lose.

[The Stationmaster]

I wonder who happens to have shares in firms which make scanners?

[beast66606]

But a leading detection company told Sky News the Government's wish-list is unlikely to be achieved in the foreseeable future.

Kromek , in County Durham, designs and builds cutting edge scanners including one that can that can differentiate between water and paint thinner held in a metal container.

Commercial director Nigel Day said even with predicted screening technology advances, the quickest security check inevitably involves some kind of delay.

"There would be too many people trying to move too quickly through a security checkpoint with various different items," he explained.

And he predicted that airport screening, which is the main focus of scanning technology development, is unlikely to be transferrable to the rail system.

"We've already seen the challenges in aviation security," he pointed out. "They're only going to be magnified in rail transport."

[John M Upton]

Whenever I see one of these daft ideas come out of Whitehall I am instantly reminded of a cracking line from Harry Pearce in an episode Spooks many years ago whilst he was rebuffing a legend file he had found.

 

"This looks like it was written by one of those strange mutants you keep locked in the basement at Vauxhall Cross next to where C grows his magic mushrooms"

 

Hopefully it will be quietly filed away along with all the rest of the daft ideas for railways that have been invented in recent decaded to gather dust in a forgotten filing cabinet somewhere and only taken out to provide a laugh at the annual DaFT Christmas Party....

[Peter Kazmierczak]

I don't have much faith in the Department of Transport to get anything right.

 

If you look in the current Railway Magazine (p.7) there is a map reproduced to show current lines electrified and those planned to be. The Dept of Transport map completely misses the London - Bedford stretch as being already electrified, as well as Rugby - Birmingham and even the WCML between Nuneaton and Tamworth.

 

If they can't get that right, well.....

[Guest Max Stafford]

So many politicians and 'advisors'.

So few lamp posts.

 

Dave.

[Oldddudders]

Hopefully even our dimmest train operators will realise this, or at least pay attention to how much revenue they would lose.

My reading of the item suggested that the intention was not to inhibit the flows - and clearly that's the big challenge for the security consultants.

 

"Any screening methodologies proposed must not delay the passengers any more than they are currently as they pass through the station," it states."

 

As far as the TOCs are concerned, I'm not sure they have any say, after all they are only station tenants. As part of the franchise agreement they will have signed up for support of the BT Police, who of course are controlled by the Home Office. If the HO decides it will be like this, then BTP will require the SFOs (Station Facility Operators) to co-operate in whatever has been decided.

 

The last time a BTP officer decided to take a risk on security against Home Office advice was, I think, 12th Feb 1991, when a "coded message" (remember them?) was given that there would be bombs at major London stations. A very senior BTP officer decided to tough it out, and there was at least one death when bombs exploded. You can hardly expect that man's successors to give the HO two fingers.

 

If I am wrong, and there proves to be a choice for the TOCs, would you fancy being the TOC MD who decides his customers' daily needs are more important than security, knowing the furore that would follow an atrocity apparently enabled by that decision? We are talking share prices and other issues outside the industry today, all of which would be affected by such bad news.

[rodshaw]

Coming soon: bus stations, supermarkets and public gathering places of all types. By 2032 all streets will have a security gate at each end. All to protect our freedom, of course.

[petethemole]

I wonder if this is more to do with making the administration look as though they are addressing a problem, rather than a concrete workable proposal. To work it would have to be rolled out at ALL stations including those currently unstaffe or staffed part-time. After all, you can't get onto a plane at an airport without being scanned. The way this is suggested, anybody with malicious intent towards trains or passengers could get on a service at a non-major station and if desired, change elsewhere. Also, given the past history of terrorist attacks on trains, a crowded commuter service picking up at stations without scanners would be a more likely target than a possibly less full intercity type of service.

Pete

[Welly]

And I was imagining squadrons of state sponsored "security" molesters, like the infamous Transportation Security Agency in US airports, deployed around Kings Cross station...

[Edwin_m]

My reading of the item suggested that the intention was not to inhibit the flows - and clearly that's the big challenge for the security consultants.

 

"Any screening methodologies proposed must not delay the passengers any more than they are currently as they pass through the station," it states."

 

Presumably this is the bit that even the suppliers of the equipment consider is impossible.

 

If I am wrong, and there proves to be a choice for the TOCs, would you fancy being the TOC MD who decides his customers' daily needs are more important than security, knowing the furore that would follow an atrocity apparently enabled by that decision? We are talking share prices and other issues outside the industry today, all of which would be affected by such bad news.

 

I agree a TOC MD would be on a sticky wicket trying to resist this, which is why the lead needs to come from Government to say it is not appropriate. If it happens then no doubt the TOCs will wanting compensation from the Government (=taxpayers), as it will increase their costs and drive many of their customers away. This attitude as applied to the Channel Tunnel has already helped to kill the market for international train services beyond London.

 

All that happens is that if a target gets too hard, the people who want to do this sort of thing will choose an easier one, ultimately down to random bombings or shootings in the street. It's impossible to provide absolute protection against the occasional fanatic.

[The Stationmaster]

I agree a TOC MD would be on a sticky wicket trying to resist this, which is why the lead needs to come from Government to say it is not appropriate. If it happens then no doubt the TOCs will wanting compensation from the Government (=taxpayers), as it will increase their costs and drive many of their customers away. This attitude as applied to the Channel Tunnel has already helped to kill the market for international train services beyond London.

I think the market for international train services beyond London hasn't/wasn't so much killed by that as the sheer inability of the train to compete with the emergence of low cost airlines and the lack of a ready regular market. Beyond London (Regional) Eurostar was mainly a political invention to help sell the project, and with a relatively dubious market base right from the start but with high operating costs even before the security aspect was added into the mix. The largest potential market was probably the West Midlands but the train would simply not be competitive with airlines for business travel and timings to meet the likely needs of the business market were virtually impossible to achieve (although CTRL/HS1 would have improved things to some extent). The East Coast was probably a realistic tourist market where time was not so important but was the market there for a daily train service - clearly not once Eurostar went into private ownership and the Regional trains were looked at in the hard light of commercial reality.

 

In respect of them the security arrangements were, I think. really little more than an awkward irritant albeit one which also added cost. And as has been shown they are not a market stopper in 'beyond Paris' operation where seasonal and limited destination trains still seem to be a continuing feature of the Eurostar timetable.

[woodenhead]

So if you commute on a daily basis that would be 2 X-rays a day plus whatever else they use to scan you.

 

If you have your shopping with you - some sort of clear liquid perchance, will you be required to throw it in the bin.

 

The government acts to 'protect us' but in doing so damages civil liberties without asking our permission - why don't we get a choice, why don't they tell us the real chance of being involved in an incident and then compare that against say dying of cancer, driving a car, getting bus (whoa, they are full of people too, aren't they as valuable as people on trains and planes, they certainly looked just as vulnerable on 7/7).

 

I'll stop now because I have really strong feelings about the proliferation of threat countermeasures versus risk versus fear and we'll end up in a locked thread.

[Jim Martin]

There don't seem to be any actual proposals for anything. The Home Office document is an invitation to bid for the contact to carry out "a comprehensive literature review of security screening technologies and methodologies, which may be deployed in the LUNR environment, for the detection of hazardous threats" ("LUNR" is "London Underground and National Rail"). The people doing the commissioning are these: I did have a brief go at finding a list of their previous studies, but it rapidly turned into a circular exercise where I kept coming back to the same page. I imagine that they run masses of things like this and that most never come to anything.

 

This was in The Guardian a week ago, where it was extensively and not-very-favourably commented upon.

 

Jim

[woodenhead]

Might just be an information gathering exercise but look how quickly the naked screening x-rays developed at airports - once an idea gestates into a prototype they quickly find favour.

[stewartingram]

There already exists technology for crowd-scanning with what amounts to CCTV cameras, looking for I believe 8 key points on each face. It is a while since I was working with the police - around 2000 - but I saw a brief demo of it then when it was in its relative infacy. They scanned a football crowd looking for known troublemakers, and the system automatically picked out certain individuals by looking at these key features with little intervention from the officers. At the rate technology advances nowadays, I'm sure there is now a highly sophisticated version of this available (or on the brink of, depending on funds) which would be more in line with what the authorities are seeking, rather than queing for X-ray scanners at the barrier lines. Not that I'm necessarily in favour of it, but just pointing out the possibility.

 

Stewart

[APOLLO]

This is the CCTV control room for, wait for it, WIGAN MBC !!!!

 

The march of Big Brother is relentless. I expect we will all be chipped and tracked one day.