You're not listening. Consider this quote from a recent Pittsburgh Tribune-Review story (one of their reporters went to the Las Vegas area, found, approached, and fastened business cards, on to freight cars carrying toxic chemicals):
If he was a terrorist, and his goal was to release a potentially catastrophic cloud of deadly gases, explosives and caustic acids -- in unguarded cars, left abandoned -- then a U.S. Department of Homeland Security's planning scenario might apply: 17,500 people dead, another 10,000 suffering injuries and 100,000 more flooding trauma wards, convinced they've been poisoned. The environmental damage would take weeks to clean up, forcing the evacuation of as many as 70,000 residents
How does the threat to your Amtrak train look now? The reader is left to consider the results if it had been a series of bombs, not business cards. (
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/specialreports/s_487117.html
A further quote:
the gases that could be released by the reporter perched atop millions of pounds of zinc chloride, phosphoric and sulfuric acids, and chlorine gas could drift 18 miles and threaten 1.1 million people with death, displacement or injury.
Another quote from another article:
"It's a horrendous risk that's happening every day,"
And we're spending how much for TSA to screen passenger train luggage?
You still want to inspect the deck chairs while the icebergs labeled anhydrous ammonia, chlorine, hydrogen flouride, sulfuric acid, phosphoric acid, and who knows how many other deadly chemicals, (stored in huge quantities in chemical plants, refineries, and transported by freight train and truck) are drifting toward you?
Consider these quotes about just one of dozens of lethal chemicals, some stored in urban areas in large quantities and transported by truck and rail: from
http://fluoridealert.org/pollution/2248.html
hydrogen fluoride (HF)-a chemical that acts as a catalyst to boost the production of high-octane gasoline ... forms a dense, ground-hugging cloud of lethal gas that can travel for 5 miles before dissipating. Currently, Sunoco uses and stores 355,000 pounds of HF at its Southwest Philly refinery ...About 4.4 million people live within a 25-mile radius of the plant .... Inhalation of the chemical can be lethal. ... The substance may cause skin and eye damage, and even heart failure. It can turn bones to jelly and eat away at lungs. ... In 1986 Amoco sponsored field tests to determine what might happen if HF accidentally leaked from a refinery then under construction in Texas City, Texas. The test release was relatively small-1,000 gallons in two minutes at a temperature and pressure that mimicked refinery conditions .. escaping HF traveled downwind at a lethal level for more than 5 miles. "Amoco was extremely surprised that the consequences were so severe" ... A catastrophe caused by a major HF leak could easily rival devastation in the wake of a December 1984 poison gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, (which) immediately killed 2,000 people and sickened more than 10,000.
That was worse than 9/11 in total injuries.
As that article also (again) points out,
Terrorists seek out any "undefined target of opportunity" that could cause a "substantial" death toll,
An Amtrak train iisn't even remotely in the same class, as far as magnitude of death, terror, and mayhem, as a deliberate dissemination by explosion of these chemicals. That's what TSA ought to be spending their time and money protecting us from. And it's what we ought to be advocating for. When I am traveling by train, I am actually way more worried about one of those tank cars exploding, or leaking, as my Amtrak train runs past it than I am about the likelihood of some fellow passenger's baggage or carry-on. And so should we all.
I would also worry about subways. The force of an underground explosion can't dissipate as readily, it's much harder to get rescuers to, it would create a debris field making rescue much more difficult, and it would take a lot longer to repair, with greater disruption of high-density urban transportation, all for the price of a single explosion. Again, the terrorists are looking for maximum disruption. Densely crowded commuters = attractive target.