Improve transit security.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The 29 million people who ride buses, subways, ferries, trains and light rail across the United States every day are an inviting target for terrorists, as evidenced by Thursday's bombings in London.

Yet the federal government has spent less than $550 million since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to protect such basic public transportation. During the same period, more than $22 billion has been spent on airline security.

Last month, a Senate committee voted to cut $50 million in spending on mass transit security - one-third of the amount devoted to it for the current fiscal year. Even worse, the Department of Homeland Security has yet to release any of the $150 million that Congress appropriated in 2004 for security on buses and trains.

Given the dual messages sent by last year's attack on Madrid's rail system and last week's attacks on London's subway and bus system, Congress should be thinking in terms of investing billions, not just millions, of dollars when it comes to improving this nation's rail and mass transit security.

It's disturbing that it took this long for lawmakers to wake up to the threat of terrorist attacks on public transportation. For the past four years, Congress has been fixated on aviation security, pouring billions of dollars into improvements in screening airline passengers and their luggage with decidedly mixed results.

Lawmakers focused on aviation, of course, because terrorists used hijacked commercial airliners to commit the Sept. 11 attacks. But focusing transportation security improvements almost exclusively on airline security four years later is like a burglary victim spending thousands of dollars to secure the bedroom window through which thieves entered and paying no attention to the other windows, doors, locks or crawl spaces that might provide prime opportunities the next time burglars pay a visit.

Securing the nation's mass transit systems is an immense challenge. Each system, whether it's bus, rail or subway, has numerous points of vulnerability and high volumes of passengers who cannot be screened as easily as airline passengers.

Sixteen times more Americans use public transit every day than fly on commercial airlines. Yet aviation security has received 40 times more federal funding. Congress should have rectified that disparity much earlier - certainly after the Madrid bombings. In the wake of the London attacks, lawmakers must wait no longer.