London Underground Bombing and the Dilemmas of Protecting Mass Transit Systems
On Friday September 15, 2017 at approximately 08:20 local time, peak rush hour, a blast occurred in the last carriage of a train pulling into Parsons Green Tube Station, a busy commuter line from southwest London into the city center. Twenty nine people were injured as a result of the blast, none of which are presumed to be serious or life-threatening.
Policing and securing mass transit poses a considerable challenge. Because mass transit systems are public, and used by millions of people daily, there is necessarily little security with few checkpoints to inspect passengers or their belongings. The volume of passengers and the need to maintain efficient throughput make it highly complex for transit operators to employ many of the security tactics used by commercial aviation or other hard target infrastructures.
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