ng description of the nation's transportation sector highlights its vulnerability to terrorists by its vast size and capacity:
The Nation's transportation network is an expansive, open, and accessible set of interconnected systems of airways, roads, tracks, terminals, and conveyances that provide services essential to our way of life. The sector includes six, interconnected subsectors or modes-aviation, freight rail, highway, maritime, mass transit and passenger rail, and pipelines-that transport people, food, water, medicines, fuel, and other commodities vital to the public health, safety, security, and economic well-being for our nation. The sheer size and capacity of the sector, which moves, distributes, and delivers billions of passengers and millions of tons of goods each year, makes it a highly attractive target for terrorists.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), along with other law enforcement agencies, faces the monumental challenge of preventing attacks to America's public transport system by innovative enemies that adapt methods to thwart such efforts. Far from being ameliorated, the threat to American public transport systems has increased since September 11. In 2005, the 9/11 Commission Report characterized federal emphasis on "aviation security spending as fighting the last war," noting that "opportunities to do harm are as great, or greater, in maritime or surface transportation" (Peterman 3). Because of this funding for rail system security in the U.S. is an even more critical issue.
High profile terrorist attacks on rail systems in Madrid, London, and Mumbai provide troubling illustration to ongoing threats to the U.S. public transportation system. As Kaplan says of the rail system: "Each year Americans make more than 3.5 billion trips on intercity trains, commuter rails, and subways. On a given day in New York City, more people pass through Penn Station than all three m...