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Comment by snewe | Hacker News Reader

Biden dreams of a wonderful new way to travel:

"Imagine boarding a train in the center of a city. No racing to an airport and across a terminal, no delays, no sitting on the tarmac, no lost luggage, no taking off your shoes."

Now imagine that people actually start taking trains. Wouldn't you expect the TSA to start screening trains too?

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Before answering that question it's important to recognize that the future he's describing is the present in Europe, where there have been terrorist attacks for decades. Therefore, if security fears result in a system worse off than what he describes, then it's simply a US cultural artifact.

There is much less danger on a train vs. a plane. A bomb would only destroy a section of a train and you can't really hi-jack a train and do much damage.

"you can't really hi-jack a train and do much damage"

For an enlightening discussion on the subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDQNpr2RnFI#t=2m48s

Besides the difficulty involved in driving a train into a building, I'm guessing it's a lot easier to destroy a train from the outside. There's no point screening passengers when anybody who wants to can throw rocks at trains, put logs across the tracks, whatever.

Edit: plane, train, whatever...

you can't really hi-jack a train

So true. You can try, though. Let me know how it goes :-)

For sure in Europe, there is no security screening for high-speed trains like there is for planes. You'd have to be paranoid to setup the same structure (or a big hater of trains).

I did have to quickly go through a metal detector (IIRC) to get on a train in Spain. But it was nothing like airport security.

This is a politics article though (hint: whitehouse). It should not be here.

This is not a politics article, David. It's about high speed rail, not about the politics of high speed rail.

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