Slowing You Down, Because Charlie Wasn't Enough

Governor Romney, only weeks away from being a lame duck, announced that the MBTA would resume random bag searches of transit system passengers. We thought at first they'd be riffling through our bags trying to find any tokens we still have in our possession, though really they are indeed looking for bombs. The announced plan will deploy portable machines outside of stations that will test baggage for bomb residue, and, with probable cause, police can ask potential passengers to open their bags for further inspection. The initiative will be similar to the methods used when the Democratic National Convention was in the run up to the 2004 presidential election. The MBTA says the searches won't slow passengers on the system down. Though this is the same administrative body who lauded the CharlieTicket as an initiative to speed up fare collection, and we all know how well that has worked out.

There's no discussion of a specific terrorist threat that prompted this decision, it's been stated to have been prompted by the court ruling in which NYC's random searches were deemed constitutional. Romney was quoted in the AP story

"Their questions are: How can you do more? Can't you do more searches?" He said. "They never say 'Gosh we're really concerned about being inconvenienced.'"

Really? Maybe Romney's listening to a different group of people than we are. It seems to us we're always hearing complaints about being inconvenienced on the T. Perhaps this all makes sense when his MBTA expert is his private driver – Mac Daniel at the Globe pulled up a 2005 photo of Romney on the T because, well, that was the last time he rode the underground. And then it was only from Park St. to Downtown Crossing on the Red Line. In that way he's certainly no Dukakis who routinely took the T to work on Beacon Hill and who we still spot from time to time on the platform waiting for a ride.

Because we weren't quick enough to catch Romney's 45 second train ride in 2005 we bring you a photo by Flickr user redjar showing the Charlie slowdown at South Station.