One of the punchlines of President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address had to do with high-speed rail: “For some trips,” he said to “laughter and applause,” “it will be faster than flying–without the pat-down.”
Now the Transportation Security Administration has announced a new policy that will eliminate this frequently used but inane argument for high-speed rail. Under the new policy, “trusted flyers” whose names were drawn from airline frequent-flyer lists would have a special bar code printed on their boarding passes. This would make them eligible to go through a fast lane without removing shoes, taking laptops out of their cases, and passing through an ordinary metal detector rather than a full body scanner.
