Blumenthal Calls For Stepped-Up Security At Rail, Bus Stations

Days after five pipe bombs were found in a backpack near a New Jersey train station, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal has introduced a bill calling for stepped-up security for rail and bus passengers.

At a press conference at Union Station in Hartford, Blumenthal said the Transportation Security Administration spends only 3 percent of its budget on security for train stations, subways, bus stations and ports. The vast majority of TSA money is spent protecting airports.

"That statistic is worth 1,000 words about the gaps existing in our rail and other surface transportation security," Blumenthal said. "And the Department of Homeland Security itself ... has done an investigation that shows many of those gaps, in fact the absence of any overall national policy or strategy for rail and other mass transit security."

There's no specific dollar amount of new funding attached to the bill, which Blumenthal admitted was unlikely to go to a vote before the November election. The stepped-up security would take the form of additional teams of bomb-sniffing dogs and stepped-up screening of both employees and passengers.

Read more: http://www.courant.com/politics/hc-blumenthal-rail-security-20160923-story.html