BART Prepares for Summer Travel Season with New ``Eyes & Ears'' Anti-Terrorism Ads.News Editors/City Desks OAKLAND, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 26, 2004 The Memorial Day Weekend is traditionally the beginning of the busy summer travel season. It's also the time when BART will be asking its passengers to be on the lookout for in search of; looking for. See also: Lookout unattended and suspicious bags as well as suspicious behavior. BART expects a big increase in the number of luggage bags on trains as millions of travelers take BART to get to Oakland and San Francisco International Airports “SFO” redirects here. For other uses, see SFO (disambiguation). For the television series, see . for their summer vacations Summer vacation (also called summer holidays or summer break) is a vacation in the summertime between school years in which students are off for 3 months, depending on the country and district. . During a noon news conference on Wednesday, May 26, at the Lake Merritt For the BART station, see . Lake Merritt is a large tidal lagoon that lies just east of downtown Oakland, California. It is surrounded by parkland and city neighborhoods. A popular 3.5 mile (~5.6 km) walking and jogging path runs along its perimeter. BART station, BART Director Lynette Sweet unveiled the agency's latest "Eyes & Ears" anti-terrorism awareness campaign designed to put passengers on alert for unattended and suspicious bags as well as suspicious behavior during the summer travel season. "Security experts say several people reported seeing unattended backpacks shortly before a series of backpack explosions killed 191 people on the Madrid rail system on March 11," said Director Sweet, who chairs BART's Security Advocacy Ad Hoc Committee ad hoc committee A committee formed with the purpose of addressing a specific issue or issues, which theoretically is disbanded once its raison d'etre is finished . "Had those passengers reported the unattended backpacks, experts predict the outcome of Madrid might have been much different." Security experts say terrorists usually do dry runs before carrying out an attack. Those dry runs often involve dropping a bag and gauging passenger reaction. "If we have the eyes and ears of BART's 315,000 daily riders on alert for such activity, then we can make BART a much less attractive target for terrorists," Director Sweet said. During the news conference, BART officials pointed out how BART's long history of being an industry leader in anti-terrorism employee training has been cited by the federal government as a transit industry "Best Practice." BART officials also discussed their approach for handling unattended and suspicious belongings belongings Noun, pl the things that a person owns or has with him or her Noun 1. belongings - something owned; any tangible or intangible possession that is owned by someone; "that hat is my property"; "he is a man of , including using video monitoring equipment and bomb sniffing sniff v. sniffed, sniff·ing, sniffs v.intr. 1. a. To inhale a short, audible breath through the nose, as in smelling something. b. To sniffle. 2. dogs. Still, Director Sweet pointed out that the federal government could dramatically increase safety at BART if it would pour more funding into rail transit security. "Sixteen times as many people take transit as fly, but congress has only appropriated $115 million for ground transit security, while nearly $12 billion has gone to aviation," she said. |
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