(The New York Times posted the following article by Thomas J. Lueck on its website on June 18.)
NEW YORK — With $100 million in federal funds allocated to improve security along the labyrinth of railroad tracks and tunnels leading to Pennsylvania Station, a top official of the Department of Homeland Security joined Senator Charles E. Schumer on a tour of the station yesterday, and both said the work was off to a good start.
But Mr. Schumer warned that much more was needed.
“Half a million people come through Penn Station every day, and each one is far better protected today against bombs, chemical weapons, biological agents and radioactive devices than they were,” said Mr. Schumer, who was joined by Asa Hutchinson, the highest-ranking deputy to Tom Ridge, the Homeland Security secretary.
Mr. Schumer added, “We can’t ever rest easy because there’s always more to do.”
Since the work on Penn Station began a year ago, about $25 million has been spent, according to officials of Amtrak, which owns and maintains the station in Midtown Manhattan. The project, expected to be under way until at least 2008, has so far included the installation of underground lighting, sensors, alarms, security cameras, barricades and other devices intended to protect against terrorism.
Two critical parts of the project involve improvements to underground ventilation systems, and expansion of narrow circular stairways that now provide the only escape routes from the six rail tunnels leading to Penn Station under the East River and Hudson River. Those projects, intended to lessen the threat of passengers’ being trapped in a terrorist attack, are in planning or the early stages of construction.
The tour yesterday had been promoted by Senator Schumer’s staff as an opportunity for news organizations to examine the subterranean security project, but Amtrak officials balked. The senator’s staff said Amtrak feared for the safety of a throng of reporters, photographers and television crews threading their way along narrow underground platforms.
Instead, the senator and Mr. Hutchinson took the tour themselves. They then posed for photographers in front of a wall of television security monitors in a control room, and conducted a news conference on the station’s concourse.
It provided Mr. Schumer, a Democrat from New York, with an opportunity to make a pitch for more federal aid for the station. He said the $100 million already allocated by Congress is far from enough, and another $350 million more should be provided for additional work, either in Amtrak’s budget, grants from the Department of Homeland Security or aid from the Federal Emergency Management Administration.
Mr. Hutchinson said the Bush administration has New York’s security at heart. But he offered no direct response to Mr. Schumer’s proposal. “For New York,” Mr. Hutchinson said, hesitating slightly when he was asked if $350 million might be too much to ask, “we are trying to make sure that it fares well.”
Mr. Hutchinson said more federal support for anti-terrorism efforts at Penn Station would be considered from “a security point of view and an investment point of view.” But he did not elaborate.