WASHINGTON - Homeland Security officials issued a bulletin advising state officials, police and transit and rail agencies to be vigilant in light of the bombings in Spain.

Adam Rountree / AP A Port Authority police officer keeps a watchful eye on pedestrian traffic in New York's Grand Central Terminal Thursday.

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Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp., said it much harder to secure transit systems than airports because it is possible to closely scrutinize every person in such large crowds.

If terrorists want to kill a lot of people, public transportation is always the preferred target, because you get a lot of people in the same place at the same time, he said.

Hard, soft targets
Though airplanes continue to be an attractive target for terrorists, he said, the U.S. government tightening of airport security may have made public transit more vulnerable.

You harden one target and you shift the threat to another,Hoffman said.

Further, he said, the success of the attacks on trains in Madrid may inspire other terrorists to imitate them.

If the TSA gets wind of a threat, the agency communication system allows it to communicate quickly with transit agencies, railroads, bus companies and cruise lines, officials said. The agency has given $115 million in security grants to transit systems in the past year.

 

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James Carafano, a homeland security expert with the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, said al-Qaida has shown an interest in bridges and tunnels. Major subway systems are now closely monitoring tunnels, he said.

The major subway systems are better prepared than they were several years ago, and that encouraging,Carafano said.

The Federal Transit Administration has sent technical teams to transit systems to assess their vulnerability and given them grants for training their employees.