A Government Accountability Office (GAO) review has found that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) may be risking rail passenger safety by failing to engage with other surface transportation stakeholders.
Recent attacks in the U.S. and Europe highlight the importance of strengthening and securing rail systems around the world. In addition, cyber attacks, such as those that affected San Francisco’s mass transit system in 2016 and Deutsche Bahn in Germany in 2017, as well as derailment attempts in Germany in 2018, demonstrate the evolving nature of the threat to passenger rail.
GAO’s review focused on how TSA works with U.S. and foreign transit and security officials and others to identify and share security standards and practices.
TSA assesses passenger rail risks through the Transportation Sector Security Risk Assessment, the Baseline Assessment for Security Enhancement (BASE), and threat assessments. The risk assessment is used to evaluate threat, vulnerability, and consequence for attack scenarios across various transportation modes. TSA surface inspectors use the baseline assessment, a voluntary security review for mass transit, passenger rail, and highway…
