Is the light ahead an oncoming train?

I started working in Manhattan a couple of months ago. I take a bus and subway to get to my office, and along the way pass through the Lincoln Tunnel, Port Authority Bus Terminal and Grand Central Station.

Last Friday, I left the office at the end of the day and took a train to the Jersey shore, passing through New York's Penn Station and Newark's uniquely-named Penn Station...if there's a mass-transit hub in the area that I missed in my travels that day, it wasn't for lack of effort (okay, I skipped Hoboken...).

After a working life of more than 25 years, I am now for the first time a user of mass transit. Because I love the cultural offerings of this great city of New York, I have found my way to Lincoln Center and Morningside Heights for concerts -- riding the subway to places I might have driven to in the past.

I live in New Jersey -- a lovely place that is in danger of becoming one large traffic jam. Imagine a whole state in which all the cars are permanently blocked from moving at all by the over-abundance of other vehicles competing for limited space on congested roads. The thought gives new meaning to Tom Wolfe's familar aphorism "You can't go home again".

We need mass transit, and more of it too. And it needs to be cleaner, safer and more reliable.

I just read that we are spending $7 per traveler on aviation safety. That doesn't seem to me to be enough, but let's assume for the moment that it is an appropriate and sensible sum. By comparison, we allocate less than a penny per traveler for safety on our buses, trains and subways.

I think we need to do more.

Even without the threat of terrorist attacks, anyone who rides the mass transit system in the New York area can see clearly that the system needs improvements that will require a significant investment. And, given the congestion of the roads, the cost of gasoline, and the environmental impact of automobile usage -- we ought to be making an investment in this critically important element of our public transportation infrastructure.

Throw in the terrorism consideration, now of great concern after Madrid and London, and the need for action is both urgent and critically important from a homeland defense perspective.

As I pass through the Lincoln Tunnel in the morning, I imagine the day when someone will blow himself up down there below the Hudson River. It almost seems inevitable. And it may be true that no investment of money will be sufficient to reduce the probablility of such an attack to zero.

But surely we can do much better than we are doing.

Congress is considering how much money they should spend on homeland security, and it is unlikely they will come up with enough money to get the job done. Meanwhile, the government issues warnings that the terrorist attacks in London are likely to be followed with attacks here in the USA -- and that mass transit is the most likely target.

It seems it is easy to issue warnings and raise the color-coded alert level, but much more difficult to figure out what to do and how to pay for it. George Bush and Michael Chertoff need to get on the stick soon and show some leadership.

UPDATE: Chertoff just announced a shakeup at DHS and some changes in procedures that seem to signal a sense of urgency and an intent to make the agency effective. The organizational changes were recommended last year, so it seems fair to question how much longer it would have taken if London had not been bombed on Thursday. Still, progress is good and welcome.

One sign that Bush and company are getting serious about homeland security will be seen in the amount we spend. Right now, based on 2004 data, we spend $38.31 per person in Wyoming. I don't know if that makes sense, but it doesn't seem like a lot in today's environment. However, we only spend $5.50 per New Yorker!

That's as good a measure as any of the intelligence and resources Mr Bush has applied to the homeland security challenge.

It has been four years since 9/11. If terrorists attack New York again, and especially if they hit the mass transit system, there will be no excuse for our lack of preparedness.

The experts tell us that it is inevitable we will be attacked. But we don't have to be completely unprepared.

Update: For more discussion of mass transit, Michael Chertoff, and the failure of the present administration to provide leadership on homeland security, see my personal journal here...

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