I was relieved to find in my inbox this morning a message from my sister-in-law in London that she and my brother, who works in the financial district, are OK. I suspect my brother will be walking home this evening.
After the first sense of relief, my next two thoughts were:
– What steps can we take to make sure our own transit systems here in Portland are as secure as they can be?
– If we let attacks like this affect our modal choices, the terrorists win.
Discuss.
4 responses to “London Transportation Bombings”
TriMet just issued an alert to their e-mail list:
“In light of this morning’s London terrorist attack, TriMet is increasing presence and vigilance on the transit system.
Riders are asked to report any suspicious package or person. Contact a TriMet employee or call 911.”
Whatever we do, we must not have GestapoTSA agents searching passengers and demanding IDs the way they do at airports. So long as that goes on, the terrorists have won.
Whatever trivial degree of safety such searches might bring is negligible alongside the loss of our freedom to travel without showing our papers.
Fellow Friends of Transit,
Let me echo Chris’ heart felt thanks that his family and most Londoners were safe from harm in today’s terrorist attack on their transit system. If there’s a silver lining to this act of terror it’s that with little imagination one could see a loss of life that could have been many orders of magnitude greater than what did occurred.
I believe that Chris’ second point deserves some further examination.
>>If we let attacks like this affect our modal choices, the terrorists win.
I’m trying to respond to this issue. I keep getting Error 500 messages