Dartblog

Of the sundry ways to die while en route to the dear old dirty town of Manhattan, perishing in the flooding of a PATH tube is the worst. The ferries, I judge, are quite comfortable and, if they were to sink, one would have a decent shot at life by swimming to either New Jersey or New York. If one of the bridges or the Holland or Lincoln tunnels were to be destroyed, one would at least have time to have a last telephone call from the warm interior of one’s car. Or WQXR might be piping out the last notes of the St. Matthew Passion just as water overtakes one’s vehicle. It could be poetic.

And folks who helicopter into Manhattan are used to dying, since those things seem to break all the time.

No, the worst is the PATH. The Port Authority’s brilliant, ugly, and stark Trans-Hudson system. The system consists of four tunnel tubes connecting Jersey City’s Exchange Place and the World Trade Center, and Hoboken and Christopher Street. The PATH is a lot like the subway, but somehow thinner, lighter, rawer. One prefers to stand rather than to sit in those flimsy cars. At rush hour, men pack themselves in a way that gives the world’s dead sardines relief that at least their lot is not so terrible. The train is fast, reliable, and yet somehow very lonely-feeling. Inside the trans-Hudson tunnel, there is no AM/FM repeater as in the Lincoln and the Holland. No cellular telephone repeater, either. The tunnel is absolutely black, save for occasional blue arcs when the train’s paddles connect uncertainly to the third rail.

This tunnel, flooded, would be the worst. I imagine a single eight o’clock PATH train carries about a thousand people. Daily, the system transports 230,000. Not one would have a chance if, as today’s New York Times entreats, a terrorist were to carry a small explosive on board. The bomb “could punch a 50-square-foot hole in one side of a tube, possibly breaching both sides of the tunnel. Under that situation, 1.2 million gallons of water a minute could pour into the tunnel, flooding parts of the system in a matter of hours,” according to the newspaper of choice for shifty-eyed jihadis.

I feel very strongly that the Times needs to just leave us alone, stop playing the role of crazy gon’-get-you-killed nanny. And I am not alone. Publishing this PATH piece is nothing but an invitation and a battle plan. The newspaper knows this. Islamists were captured last July plotting against the PATH system. The Times says it has withheld details about how an attack might work, but look at the passage I just quoted. Rather, I will repeat it: “The worst case included in the analysis suggests that a bomb that could be easily carried aboard a train could punch a 50-square-foot hole in one side of a tube, possibly breaching both sides of the tunnel. Under that situation, 1.2 million gallons of water a minute could pour into the tunnel, flooding parts of the system in a matter of hours.” Well, that’s enough. The terrorists’ primary research and development objective is to put together a simple mission statement like the one the Times just published.

Everyone who uses the PATH train — the majority of these people, I hasten to add, are exactly the kind of strong, productive, middle class American men the terrorists hate most — knows that the system is vulnerable and that there are no security checkpoints. They know the PATH tunnels are laid on the riverbed because, unlike the Lincoln and the Holland, the tubes do not dive down and underneath the bedrock. They know all of this, and they accept it, because they need to get to work. What they don’t need is an international newspaper painting a red bull’s eye on these arteries.

The Times trots out the usual excuse: A transit official leaked the report because not enough was being done. But those who ride the PATH already know that very little can be done. If the system becomes mired with the usual Port Authority security schema, it becomes utterly useless. One does not imagine the leak receivers at the Times wish further harm upon the city. But in trying to do good, as usual, they may have done ill.