Over the last two days, The New York Times has uncovered the police plans for the rebuilt World Trade Center complex. Originally presented as an open space with appropriate security measures, the rebuilt Ground Zero, as the NYPD sees it, will be a heavily-guarded area with an around-the-clock police presence.
While we’re only tangentially concerned with the above-ground world, when The Times via a City Room post drilled down on the police presentation, the findings impacted the underground world of the subway and should be dismaying to subway advocates, to say the least. According to the document, the police are aiming to conduct sweeps of train cars that pass underneath the World Trade Center complex. Even worse are the calls for on-board searches that could delay train cars up and down the various subway lines, creating even more subway delays.
According to the 36-page presentation that The Times says has been given “by top-ranking police officials in recent months,” the security zone encompassing Ground Zero would call for teams of eight to ten officers led by a sergeant to conduct on-board security sweeps. The NYPD would “briefly hold” trains in the station while officers — one per car — conducted the searches.
I can’t argue against security measures put in place to protect the subway system. As it stands now, New York City Transit’s underground network is a rather porous and vast system that runs under and above some of the city’s most vital areas. Hundreds of trains pass under Times Square and over the Manhattan Bridge each day. Rail yards are left unguarded and are accessible to anyone who puts some effort into getting in.
But subway cars are a different matter. The NYPD should not get into the business of holding subway cars in stations to conduct sweeps. While they may wish to only “briefly” keep those cars sitting idle, a brief delay, as NYC Transit is wont to point out, echoes up and down the entire line. If the NYPD holds a Brooklyn-bound R train at Cortlandt St. for a few minutes, trains in Astoria will feel like the shockwave of that delay. Subway service, already slower than we’d like and subject to a rising number of delays, will slow to a crawl around a Ground Zero security bottleneck.
The subways should be safer, but security measures should not include more delays. The NYPD has to find a way to improve subway security without sacrificing efficiency, and this plan — while simply a proposal — highlights measures that could drastically impact subway performance. That is not an adequate solution to any security problem.
Update: As NY1’s Bobby Cuza noted in the comments, this is not a new NYPD tactic. As part of Operation TOMS (Transit Order Maintenance), the NYPD has been conducted 40-second sweeps of train cars. Here, they are proposing to add the WTC site to their list of heavily-trafficked and closely-guarded stations. I haven’t heard much — negative or positive — about Operation TOMS, but I’m still not too keen on police sweeps holding up train traffic, even if only for a supposed 40 seconds.
There’s an old saying out there that goes something like this: All is fare in love and subways. Or perhaps that’s love and war. But either way, this week has not been a good one for public transit and fare-payment technologies.
