You have that right Anna, when I was a kid we quite regularly rode the train for 12 miles from our place to the nearest town- great fun.
Feds green light naked scanners
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You have that right Anna, when I was a kid we quite regularly rode the train for 12 miles from our place to the nearest town- great fun.
How do I know these things? The nationalities and personal histories of these goons has been researched and some of it published. They are from if not affluent, at least stable families. Most have been university educated, some were engineers. None were from countries at war with the US. The 9/11 attackers were from that bastion of freedom, Saudi Arabia. Richard Reid was an American for cryin' out loud.
I can formulate several reasons why someone might do this; Dr Abdullah Azzam, who could probably be considered the father of modern Holy War preached, "One hour in the path of jihad is worth more than 70 years of praying at home". Militant Islam believes Allah hasn't been placated enough by istishhad (martyrdom). Militant Islam will not be satisfied until all on earth have been converted, or at least submissive to it. Oddly, he preached these sermons in New York, encouraged by the Reagan Administration to radicalise muslim youth into fighting the Soviets invaders in Afghanistan. The Americans never invaded Saudi Arabia, and didn't invade Afghanistan until the radicals poked the tiger in the eye. Sure they have their reasons for attacking innocent targets, but any reasonable person would consider them nothing short of evil.
Okay, maybe you're unaware of the total sh*tstorm created by one lunatic in Montreal and the clusterf**k of a gun control system that followed. And that was a solution to a nearly non existant problem. What do think is going to follow here, especially with the US involved.
CP cant keep their trains on the tracks at 60 k,I would hate to see them run a high speed.
Theres 2 derailments or more a year here from Fernie B.C. to Burmis Alberta which is 30 miles east of the Alta/B.C. border.
Thats just a 130 mile stretch into the rockys.They had one right across from my house a few years ago,and when I lived in Burmis I witnessed 2 runaways and derailments complete with explosions while BBQing at a friends house which was next to the tracks..8O
I love trains though,I still remember when I moved west from Toronto in the 60's on the train and glenn Campbells one record playing over and over.
I remember every minute of that long train ride and thats when there was passenger service through the crowsnest pass into Fernie B.C. and the coast.
The service stopped here shortly after we moved and my dad rented the cpr station for a warehouse for his hardware store and I spent many days in the old office listening to CBC on their radio,they told me it ran through the rails.:roll:
Eventually we found the tunnel in the basement that linked the whole towns main street up from the prohibition days when rum running was big.
Sorry,off topic.
That's exactly why I said "when we get our craftsmanship together"......
But it is public transportation and we may eventually see scanners at railway stations, too.
Terrorists have achieved one goal, to terrorise the flying public, the government has done far more to cause inconvenience and financial losses. If they really wanted to bring down airplanes there are safer, for them at least, ways of doing it. They don't even have to bring one down, they only have to try before another impediment to air travel is implimented. Rail travel is far less secure, and though we don't have rail beds that can handle high speed trains, an attack on one would cause the same measures to be implimented on rail travel, they just don't have the news shock appeal, yet. Cruise ships are large slow moving targets. Terrorists only have to hit us in the wallet, (or the psyche) so many times before we either pander to them, or get into a really, really ugly fight. I prefer the fight, but that's me.
Apparently they haven't terrorized the flyers enough. People still fly.
Impediment? They take out old precautionary measures and install new ones. I can't see much of a difference.
Anyway, so what is the alternative? Not being cautious and carrying on flying? Not flying? I can't see where whining about scanners is offering any sort of solution to keeping airports and flying as safe as we can.
Sure people still fly, there aren't many alternatives. They don't take out old precautionary measures either, they just keep adding on. The difference you don't see is cost. But I remember getting free hot meals in cattle class, I remember checking firearms and fishing poles without paying an extra $50, or paying for an extra checked bag, I remember not having to pay a security fee, I remember a 5 minute breeze through security from the end of the line, I remember being able to take a Tim's, bag lunch or bottle of water through the checkpoint, I remember not having to take my shoes off, I remember having a restricted area ID card being sufficient to get through secuity without being physically searched, I remember being able to accompany someone to the boarding lounge when I wasn't travelling, I remember knowing security personnel by sight if not by name, just to name a few, and that doesn't include the fun stuff involved in going to the US. These are all changes that have happened in the last 9 years.
AS JLM says, what really suffers are the short flights, it takes longer to fly between Calgary and Edmonton than to drive, (mind you, that's a poor example since the airport is in Leduc and not Edmonton, a 20 minute drive right there). But even Toronto to Sudbury, you're better off to drive.
The only way to keep an airport safe is to build a 5 mile perimeter around it, not let any unauthorised vehicle traffic or people into that perimeter and screen everybody who does enter. Still, there would be holes in security, but that wouldn't matter because the costs would be so prohibitive no one could afford to fly, and even if they could it would be less of a hassle just to drive to Disneyland. Problem solved. And don't laugh, this idea is already making its rounds, I didn't just pull it out of thin air.
Someone touched on high speed trains earlier in the thread. That might be an even better alternative. In Japan, it takes about 1 hour to fly from Tokyo to Osaka. If you're coming from somewhere near the centre of Tokyo, look for about a 1 hour trip to the airport. A couple of hours before flight time. At the other end, about another hour to get from the airport in Osaka to wherever you want to end up. (I'm using average times as these are really big cities). So, the round trip from Tokyo to Osaka is about 5 hours in total.
The bullet train is around 2 hours and 45 minutes, from Tokyo Station to Shin-Osaka station. You could estimate another half hour or so at either end to get to where you want to go, and you're looking at over an hour quicker to go by train vs. air.
And the ride on the bullet train is far more comfortable and enjoyable. And you can eat, drink, and be merry along the way!
Imagine if we could ever make a high-speed train service throughout Canada...the possiblities are tantalizing. Can't be done? Country too big/too wide? Uh, if you overlay Japan north to south on top of the East Coast of North America, it would stretch from Montreal to South Carolina. Sure, they have more people than we do, but not nearly as much tourism (potential traffic loads). On the other hand, they have quite a few more earthquakes than we do, and that is one of the very few things that will throw a bullet train off their consistently on-time schedules.
I've used the TGV in France between Paris and Rennes, yes it is comfortable, being greeted by the Gendarmerie at Montparnasse carrying MP-5's was a bit off putting though. Trains come with their own hazards though. Maybe its a cultural thing, but North American level crossings seem to be a challenge for impatient drivers, or just accidents waiting to happen, my cousin's son was driving a dump truck across one when hit by an AmTrak train in Southern Ontario. Our kids' school bus driver in Sask had to hit the ditch when she couldn't stop for one. The problem with potential train wrecks is that they can happen a long way from rescue in this vast country. The other problem is funding, if a train can't be run without government subsidies it creates an unfair competetive business environment. As well, if airlines had the abyssmal safety record of AmTrak in the US in the past they would've be shut down in a heartbeat.
Bob, an interesting subject...I'm thinking of firing up a new thread on it...
We will need the same security on trains that we have on airplanes - they are mass transit with potential for mass killings.
Yep....Ten Penny is on to something here....make it practically impossible to get on an airplane, and the terrorists will simply switch targets....perhaps starting with the airport waiting rooms.....crammed nose to nose with hundreds of people waiting to be declared "safe" by security......BOOM!....or trains, or buildings, or sports events, or cruise ships, or buses, or subways, or....well, you get the idea.
Time to accept that life is a risk, go bact to a reasonable level of interference at airports, and focus on intelligence gathering......
As well, all scanning systems depend on their operators........as for me, if some sweet 22 year old lady traipes through....the next gut could be carring Little Boy, and I might not notice...
Human operators are simply doing a job, and are as vulnerable to boredom and simple rote as anyone else....in fact more so, as their job is stupendously dull.
I just read a true account of a Blackwater employee going through security at Baghdad Airport, onto a Blackwater airplane.....he announced he was carrying a loaded Glock 9mm pistol, which the security personnel took from him, dutifully ran through the x-ray machine.....and then returned to him... lol
Time to accept that life is a risk, go bact to a reasonable level of interference at airports, and focus on intelligence gathering......
As well, all scanning systems depend on their operators........as for me, if some sweet 22 year old lady traipes through....the next gut could be carring Little Boy, and I might not notice...
Human operators are simply doing a job, and are as vulnerable to boredom and simple rote as anyone else....in fact more so, as their job is stupendously dull.
I just read a true account of a Blackwater employee going through security at Baghdad Airport, onto a Blackwater airplane.....he announced he was carrying a loaded Glock 9mm pistol, which the security personnel took from him, dutifully ran through the x-ray machine.....and then returned to him...
lol
I guess planes do have one advantage in that it's quite tough for the bastards to hide out mid route and high jack them.
Really? At one of our nearby airports they took out an old x-ray scanner for luggage and installed some newfangled gadget that scans much better and it is faster.
Make up your mind, please.
Anyway, I don't care if they keep adding scanners. If it keeps 1 terrorist from taking out a couple or 3 hundred passengers plus people on the ground, I'm happy. The alternative would not be enough. I can stand in a line for a half hour waiting for a 10 minute scan, no problem. I like chatting with people; even the security people. I don't fret about delays. What would I do, grow wings and fly out to push the plane faster? Nah. I sit and read or chat.
Perhaps one day the people in charge will make airports nicer places to be, as well.
One nifty gadget I think airports could use is something like a GPS but only for airport mapping.