With more bombings in London, you can’t help but wonder if we will ever feel safe again.
A recent article in the Village Voice responded to the London tragedy and discussed the state of New York’s subway system. The media here is very New York-centric.
The most encouraging thing they could find to say was that “given that size[of the subway system], the chances that your particular subway train will get hit during the specific time you are on it are faily slim”. Not much consolation.
Less encouraging comments included:
- Preventing an attack in an ‘open system’ such as the subway is practically impossible. Therefore, we need to focus just as much on surviving an attack as we do on averting one
- Of the $600 million spending deemed necessary to improve security between 2000-2004, only $200 million was spent
- A new plan has been devised for 2005-2009 and requires $495 million worth of improvements but no funding has been allocated
- Studies show that one in four subway announcements is unintelligible, making organised evacuation difficult
- The only access to some stations is through rotating doors that allow one person to pass through at a time. If they fell under NYC building codes they would fail abysmally. Evacuations through these doors would “most likely result in a major disaster”
- If the NYC subway system suffered major problems, many emergency workers would not be able to get to work
Then watching the West Wing last night, I heard Admiral Percy Fitzwallace (played by John Amos of Good Times fame) sum it up in a way that really hit home for me…
I can’t tell when it’s peacetime and wartime anymore.
9 comments
Only 1 in 4 announcements is unintelligible? I’d score that more like 9 in 10… I think half of the operators aren’t even speaking English!
Ha! I remember Ben and I kept looking to you guys to translate!<br><br>There’s some great points there Kristy. I keep hearing here about how 6 million people use the London underground every day, so our chances of incident are very slim. Doesn’t make me feel any more comfortable jumping on a tube. I guess though, as my Dad always says ‘when your time’s up your time’s up!’
Wow – 6 million! 4.5 mill here (there can be over 2,000 on one train) and I thought that was bad!<br><br>I know how you feel about being uncomfortable. Whenever I get on a subway now I scan for backpacks etc and always breathe a sigh of relief when I emerge at ground level again. Just being underground is enough to make me jumpy!
Hey, and as a sign of the times, here’s a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4704359.stm" target="_blank">BBC news article</a> devoted to the bombing impacts on mobile phone coverage. It also calls for people with camera phone images of the incident to email them to the cops.<br><br>It’s amazing what an impact mobile telephony has had on human relationships and on crime fighting!
Very Good Point Kristy!
Well aren’t you an encouraging young thing Micah? Thanks for always reading the site buddy!
While I’d like to think that 6 million people use the London underground per day I think that might be incorrect. <br><br>An estimated size of London’s population is at 7.5 million people. <br><br>According to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> the underground is utilized by about 2.7 million a day.<br><br>That’s still a lot of people moving around.
oh. maybe it’s 6 million trips per day?
If these bombings persist in London, the Underground will soon be known as the Open Cut!