TSA Viper teams and Amtrak stations
In a discussion of TSA “security theater,” Jim Bovard described Viper teams—Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response teams—sweeping into train stations to conduct what he characterized as random forceful searches on travelers boarding trains or buses. He said some train stations in New Jersey required everyone who wanted to board Amtrak at that station to go through a Viper search, with luggage inspection and pat-downs, while another Amtrak station ten or fifteen miles away was not covered. From this he drew the conclusion that a terrorist could simply go one station down and still blow up the train, calling it a level of idiocy at the policy level that Congress complains about but keeps financing Seeing Through TSA’s Security Theater With Jim Bovard (2015).
Bob Zadek framed the Viper teams as random rather than universal, unlike airports, and argued that no one could claim they make anyone safer because the odds a terrorist would be caught by a Viper team are low. He described the Viper team as pure theater—“don’t just stand there, do something”—serving to build Americans’ dependency on government and their tolerance of lost time and liberty. Bovard agreed, saying Viper teams are a good example of how TSA only comforts stupid people Seeing Through TSA’s Security Theater With Jim Bovard (2015).
Earlier in the same episode, Bovard advocated abolishing the TSA and moving to private security, arguing that private security would respect the rights and dignity of travelers while federal agents, some of whom enjoy trampling rights, produce a worst-case scenario of poor security and violated rights. He said airports could set their own standards and experiments would yield a better system. Bob Zadek had asked whether Bovard would support eliminating the TSA and returning to a pre-TSA system of going from the taxi cab to the airplane directly Seeing Through TSA’s Security Theater With Jim Bovard (2015).
California rail and incremental improvement
Mark Joffe, in a discussion of California infrastructure, said the bullet train is not a good idea but that this does not mean California should not have more rail transportation—only that it should be done in a more incremental way. He pointed to Amtrak’s website as showing passenger rail service all around California, including a train from Oakland to Los Angeles, a line from San Diego up to Seattle, and a Central Valley line from Merced to Bakersfield and beyond. He said California already has a lot of train capacity, but the trains are very slow, very infrequent, and subject to delays Not Enough Bricks (2019).
Joffe described Caltrain electrification as a project he would oppose as an absolutely doctrinaire pure libertarian but had stood down from. He said the federal government approved several hundred million dollars of subsidies to electrify the line connecting San Jose and the Caltrain station in San Francisco, which is currently diesel. He said electrified trains, once clean sources of electricity are available, would be non-polluting and could accelerate and decelerate faster than diesel trains, operating faster. He also noted Caltrain has over three dozen grade-level crossings, which create danger and traffic jams from gate downtime, and said replacing them with grade separations—bridges or tunnels—would increase safety, speed up trains, and allow more intensive use of the line Not Enough Bricks (2019).
Joffe also raised driverless trains as a more innovative option, noting BART was designed that way going back to the 1970s and that the operator is not essential to movement but is there for safety reasons. He imagined very small two-car trains running very frequently over BART and an electrified Caltrain, which because they are driverless would be much less expensive to operate. He said this could provide more frequency so people deciding between driving, Uber, and mass transit would not be dissuaded by a twenty-minute BART headway or a one-hour Caltrain headway Not Enough Bricks (2019).
Rail subsidies and market distortion
Randal O’Toole, asked by Bob Zadek about his problem with rail, said he loves trains—he had a train set, his first train ride was at age five, and he met his future wife on a train—but does not think other people should have to subsidize his hobby. He said that is what is going on with Amtrak or urban transit: a few people who love trains think everybody else should subsidize their hobby so they can ride trains, and that is a huge waste of money Never let a good crisis go to waste (2020).
O’Toole gave figures: it costs about $5 million to build a mile of a freeway lane and $200 million to build a mile of light rail, and even more for a mile of subway or elevated rail. He said hardly anybody rides the trains being built. On subsidies, he said total subsidies to highways average about a penny for every passenger mile carried on highways, roads, and streets in America, while subsidies to mass transit average a dollar and a penny—a hundred times as much. He said he would like to see an end to highway subsidies too, and to all subsidies, and see what happens; if people want to ride mass transit, private transit would spring up, but it would look a lot different. He said if the cost of driving rises by a penny a mile, habits change little, but if the cost of riding mass transit rises by fifty cents or a dollar a mile, that affects how much people ride, and that is the market distortion Never let a good crisis go to waste (2020).
Bob Zadek responded that with a market distortion the price mechanism is lost, and that with distorted pricing we have no idea what people want. He said government providing services should at least provide the services people want, and people do not get to vote with their dollars when there are subsidies. He also noted that mass transit is almost 100% government-owned and operated, creating the pricing distortion, and said it was not always that way—that mass transit systems were once privately owned and reasonably priced, making a profit, before switching from private to public Never let a good crisis go to waste (2020).
Across episodes
Amtrak appears in three episodes, but the excerpts show no development of a single argument about it: Bovard uses Amtrak stations as an illustration of TSA Viper team randomness, Joffe treats existing Amtrak California service as a baseline for incremental improvements, and O’Toole treats Amtrak as an example of subsidized rail hobbyism. The question of whether passenger rail should be subsidized at all is touched by O’Toole and, in a different register, by Joffe’s concession on Caltrain electrification, but the excerpts do not show the two addressing each other or a position changing between episodes.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state Amtrak’s founding date, its statutory basis, its ownership structure, its budget, its ridership figures, or any specific Amtrak route’s performance. They do not name the court ruling Bovard mentions in connection with TSA screening policy, nor the bill or program behind Caltrain electrification funding beyond “several hundred million dollars of subsidies.” They do not give the outcome of any case involving Amtrak or rail subsidies, and they do not cover Amtrak’s long-distance network, its relationship to freight railroads, or any congressional debate over its authorization.