Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Scanning commuters

I'm not the only person to have raised an eyebrow at transport secretary Alistair Darling's recent statement of the bleedin' obvious - that airport-style security would impossible to enforce on the railways. I'm amazed that anyone had actually seriously suggested it as an option, but pleased to hear that sanity has prevailed. There's talk of using millimetre-wave scanners on the Heathrow Express platforms at Paddington as an experiment, but as that's a pretty closed system it's an easy line to secure. I'm willing to put that down to simple experimentation and a desire to tinker with the technology to see what can be done.

It's good news that it's being made clear that it's simply not possible to guarantee that more people won't be able to blow themselves up on our public transport network if they really want to. As Christian Wolmar says in the BBC's article, "we have to accept that there's a very, very small risk that something happens to any particular individual." Every second of our lives we face risk in some form or another, and while it's sensible to minimise risk wherever possible I've been worried recently that the security hysteria - for which public opinion is responsible as much as the government - following the suicide bombings in London would lead to some kind of hamfisted attempt to start X-raying bags at Waterloo. The kind of chaos this would cause can only be imagined, and it's reassuring to hear that the transport secretary has firmly ruled out such over-the-top security regimes out. I'm sure the security industry lobby would love such a regime - after all, there would be lots of great big fat contracts and profits in it for them - but it looks like they're going to be disappointed.