Greater Funding Needed for Public Transit Security

"Since 9/11, Washington has allocated a scant $250 million for transit security, compared with the $18.1 billion it has granted the airline industry...As for Congress, before the London bombings the Republican-controlled Senate had been set to reduce the allocation for public-transit-safety efforts from $150 million to $100 million in the $31.8 billion appropriations bill for homeland-security operations. After London, suggestions emerged to increase the total — though still by just a fraction of what the airline industry receives...Since 9/11, public-transit agencies — out of their own tight budgets, and because of apparent holes in our national-security defenses — have been obliged to spend $2 billion on new safety measures, including police visibility, undercover security, canine patrols and security sweeps on vehicles and stations."