Can Europe’s Railways Be Made Safe?

“It’s a load of rubbish to call it a sophisticated attack,” says British defense consultant Michael Dewar of the terrorist bombings in Madrid. The perpetrators had only to deposit their knapsacks of explosives fitted with simple timers and depart. “You and I could do it,” Dewar says. The bad news is, railways are easy targets for terrorists — and defending them would require, at a minimum, airport-style delays that train travelers aren’t willing to accept.

Europe has 228,000 km of track along which bombs could be planted. Big cities depend on commuter lines and subways to move huge numbers of people with minimum fuss — 3 million on the London Underground, 9 million on the Moscow subway each day. Since Sept. 11, many rail systems have stepped up security measures: spot checks by sniffer dogs, radiation detectors, patrols at train yards, more police and closed-circuit TV cameras. But these investments can only slightly reduce the risk. “It’s always a trade-off between the amount of security provided and the cost of doing so, not just financial but the inconvenience the public is willing to tolerate,” says Charles Shoebridge, a British former antiterrorist intelligence officer. “While it might be tolerable to wait two hours to board an aircraft, that’s just not practicable for any mass transit system.”

These weaknesses have not been lost on terrorists. Since 2000, bombs have either gone off or been defused in the railways of India, the Philippines, Russia, Czech Republic, South Africa, Israel and Germany. At least 40 people were killed by a blast in the Moscow subway last month. Ten thousand French rail workers walked all 32,000 km of the country’s tracks last week after a shadowy group calling itself AZF demanded [EURO]4.3 million in ransom, and showed they meant business by giving officials the location of a powerful 2.5-kg bomb designed to be triggered by the vibration of a passing train.

Some high-profile trains like Eurostar already use airline-style baggage and passenger screening “and a lot of other security measures you don’t see,” says its communications director, Paul Charles. Thomas Ország-Land, security specialist for Jane’s Terrorism and Security Monitor, thinks Europeans will now opt to protect themselves by “treating other trains, including suburban services, as aircraft,” which will mean shutting down many small stations to permit screening at bigger ones and arming railroad staff. “My guess is that now, we are going to protect ourselves.”

But trains in the E.U., not counting subways, carried more than 5 billion passengers in 2003 — approximately 20 times the load of airlines. Governments are likely to try less drastic and cheaper measures, like more police and cameras, more exits from trains and tunnels to aid escape, better emergency lighting, catastrophe drills for emergency services and especially educating passengers to keep alert for suspicious bags. “Unfortunately, the threats we now face mean that no one can see an unattended bag or backpack and figure, ‘Someone will probably pick it up,'” says a French security official. “If they don’t, the consequences could be catastrophic. ‘Probably’ just isn’t good enough anymore.”