brubenow

It's been many years since I've ridden a train in Europe. What kind of security is there? Is it similar to airport security with X-ray machines? Or are we just crossing our fingers?

thursdaysd

The Eurostar has security. Some Spanish train stations have X-ray machines but they don't always use them.

One of the good things about train travel in Europe (and elsewhere) is that in general you can just show up a few minutes ahead of time and board the train. I have never crossed my fingers when doing so and have no plans to start.

JAMH

I have not been to every country in Europe so I can answer only for the few that I have visited.

Yes, in Spain (Barcelona and Madrid) for high speed trains.
No, in the train stations that I have to in France, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands, UK, and Belgium.

kerouac

In light of recent events, French authorities say they are going to test machines in one of the train stations (in addition to the Eurostar screening) for the TGV lines. No date has been given.

Dukey1

It's probably a lot more secure than when you drive a car.

Robert2533

Currently, only the high speed long distance trains have enhanced security; luggage screening (x-ray machines and checking tickets before boarding. Regional trains are still open, but because of the current situation, you can expect security to be tightened.

flanneruk

The Eurostar between London and NW Europe has airport-style security: the unrelated railway service with the same brand name between major Italian cities doesn't.

Outside Spain, that's just about it. Europe's railway system simply isn't set up for universal physical inspection of bags and passengers, and would collapse if it were.

If it did collapse through unnecessary security, the resultant carnage on the road system would be infinitely greater than the worst fantasies of Islamophobe neurotics. A typical holiday weekend in the UK 30 years ago, for example, used to produce more road traffic fatalities than last week's Paris massacre.

Britain's current 3.5 road deaths per year per 100,000 people isn't spectacularly lower than America's 11.6 just because we drive safer cars, more responsibly - though that's an important part of the reason. It's because we don't use cars as much: public transport - with or without pointless security checks - is far safer.

If Americans had a proper public transport system and drove properly-maintained cars as competently and unhysterically as we do, the 36,000 people killed on American roads ever year (that's one 9/11 every single month, every single year) would fall by 25,000.

Robert2533

If the USA was the size of that small island where you reside, then perhaps there would be a better public tranporation system. But for now that's not going to happen.

asps

In the dark years of Italian political terrorism, the most bombed site was the the long tunnel on the old mountain line between Bologna and Florence (as well as the Bologna station). For years policemen boarded trains and checked that every piece of baggage had an owner on board. Apparently it was enough to stop bombs, but it was a wholly different kind of terrorism.

asps

I would add that a lot of stations - I am thinking to Firenze SMN or Zürich HBF - are not physically separated from their surroundings and setting up airport-style checks would need rebuiliding the station. In some places the station underground passages are used more by residents crossing the track areas than by travelers actually boarding trains.

tonfromleiden

It looks they already got what they want: creating senseless fear among those godless decadent Westerners. If a substantial part of the public would react as the OP, large parts of Europe would come to a standstill.
Even the station in my medium-sized city has some 60.000 passengers per day. Imagine the queues when each of them had to go through airport-style security checks.

kerouac

I don't think the machines would be practical in just about any station I can think of, not to mention the fact that it would be ridiculous from the standpoint of security to just set this up in the stations of Paris, Berlin, Brussels or Milan and not in every other station along the way where these trains stop. And then there is the protection of the tracks along the whole line... It just never ends.

There actually was a bomb on a TGV about 20 years ago (near Lyon, I think). It blew a hole in the side of the car in the baggage area but what was totally remarkable and a great relief was that the train didn't even derail.

annhig

As flanner and others have said, it would be completely impractical to introduce security at every station on the UK network - according to this article there are 2,533 of them:

http://www.theguardian.com/news/data...ns-listed-rail

The underground would be easier as there are already barriers but it would introduce huge delays and chaos at the busier stations, not to mention the cost of extra personnel.

tonfromleiden

... and that's only the security you need for the international and high-speed lines. Every morning and every evening millions and millions of commuters use the train and - as Madrid has shown - are an easy target. It is a total illusion to think 100 percent safety can be guaranteed. There is no total safety and never has been.
The worrying part is one attack makes people afraid of using public transport, while it's obvious that the individual chances something happening are negligible. Those same people have no concerns getting every day into their car, knowing nothing about the state of mind of their fellow road users.

bilboburgler

The fact that we are even discussing this tells me that these dupes have won a battle.

The fact that the dolts in the Republican race are talking about keeping immigrants out (and not one of them a native American) tell me that these dupes have won a battle.

Look, there are 1,500 million muslims in the world if they were all so bad we would be ankle deep in blood. Clearly these dupes arn't Muslim they are just dupes.

The dupes win when we change what we do.

Trains are safe.

flpab

I can't imagine how they would do that. We had a few police on our train from Paris to Germany in Oct.

sandralist

A lot of incoherent thinking on display here. There are luggage checks on the Eurostar. Brussels has shut down its entire metro system and may continue to keep it shut for several more days (officials meeting as I type). As pointed out, Italians have occasionally found ways to monitor all luggage on certain train routes.

Horrific terror attacks have taken place on trains and in train stations within Europe, well within recent memory. They are terror targets, and people who thought they were safe taking the train turned out not to be, and have been killed or injured.

Thinking that the "terrorists have won" if we discuss facts, or don't all buy tickets to Sharm el-Sheikh (anybody even considering that to prove a point?) is just a cliche people shout when they are upset. It's like children putting their fingers in their ears and babbling to drown out the noise.

Don't be surprised if you start seeing luggage checks at European train stations.

chartley

Don't forget that many stations have no staff at all at present, or for only a few hours a day. How many security staff would you need to employ to cover all the hours when trains are arriving and departing?

There is a similar problem with reintroducing border controls. In my 30 year experience, border crossings between most Western European countries have always been fairly lightly staffed, and the interiors of vehicles never checked. How many staff would you need? How would you get over the fact that security work is often done by recent immigrants, some of whom are Muslims?

hetismij2

Sandra, I can't see how they would do luggage checks at European stations. There are just too many of them, many completely unmanned. The delays involved in searching everyone getting on to a commuter station at rush hour would be horrendous. It just wouldn't work. Or if it did it would drive people into their cars - and who is to say the car next to you in the jam isn't a car bomb? Are we going to have to have all cars entering a road searched? All boats on the canal system of Europe?

Better that the water sources are checked and protected.

bilboburgler

I suspect the point is that putting luggage checks at stations, does not solve the problem. It merely makes that station less susceptible to bombing and another more so. The route cause is access to bombs and a belief in a view of a god is more important than a man's life.

Do you remember when bombs used to come in the post, so my factory put in xray machines for bombs, then bombs came in luggage, so we put in xray machines at airports, then we had the shoe bomber, so we all take out shoes off, then there was the underpants bomber........

I kid you not when I take a bike on an aircraft now they want to xray it.

And yet the large numbers of deaths that we do get come from people driving in cars (which is how these guys got about) and the suicides blew up outside the concert. So the logic should be......

No lets focus on the root cause not the result.