London, the vicitm if this weeks terrorist attacks, is soldiering on. I doubt that anything that wasn’t damaged was closed by their public transportation systems. Bless them for classic stoic resistance.
This walkway is the only way for people to cross the Delware river without using a car or a train. I now must take my bike on the train into the busy stations as if it were fucking winter.
I complained, of course. But it is useless. Nobody at DARPA cares. They are a bunch of pork fed fatties who have bloated themselves by looting the various fundmakers, such as the toll system. They’ve managed to screw other things up so badly (such as EZPass) so badly that nobody wants to use it.
They use any excuse to close the walkway. “I thought I saw a snowflake” would be one excuse.
Never mind that they’ve had a police officer on the walkway since 2001. Although his job description might be considered “On duty sleeper” or “Pathway blocker”.
They’re trying to compensate. There was a big thing on their website also about how they were increasing police presence on the SpeedLine. As I saw on Friday, this consisted of having a couple cop cars parked outside the Ferry Ave station.
How many people use this walkway? I mean, if I were a terrorist (Note: I am not.) would I think of this as the place to bomb, instead of, say, the train? If there are hundreds of people on it at any given time during rush hour, maybe. Otherwise, I think a terrorist might find a more likely target.
What does the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency have to do with walkways in Philly? Maybe they’re testing a new algorithm for pedestrian routing during emergency situations.
Makes no difference. There are a gazillion places where there are large clusters of people at predictable moments. The lineup for the Millenium Force coaster at Cedar Point. Time Square on New Year’s eve. Rock concerts, movie theatres, carnivals, county fairs, street festivals, sports events, high school graduation ceremonies, NASCAR races, political rallies, protest marches, shopping malls on peak shopping days, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. Stepping up security at one of them is like putting bars on one of the windows of your house. Completely useless.
The walkway is above the PATCO train lines. One could theoretically pitch grenades onto the track or the road or something. IN reality, to do so one would have to haul explosives up to a point where the walkway is over the tracks (not an entirely easy task), evade the police precense, and not be noticed by the assorted joggers, cyclists and sightseers. One would have an easier time picthing grenades onto other tracks fro the many overpasses.
Either way, this is FUCKING STUPID! It doesn’t even qualify as window dressing security since nobody will know it is closed except for the folks who use it!
But DRPA execs are too busy finding ways to fleece money from the agency to care about anyone.