Should airport-style security be introduced in UK’s railway stations?

Imagine you’re running late for your train. You know the doors will shut 30 seconds before departure – you still have time, you tell yourself.

The thing is, though, you don’t need to be at the platform 30 seconds before – it’s two hours, as you need to get through security first.

Airport security typically involves not only scanning your plane ticket, but also having your bag screened, your body patted down and walking through a metal detector.

And that’s all before you enter the plane; that’s just to get inside the airport.

Catching a train, meanwhile, only involves walking into the station and flashing your ticket to staff at the barrier or scanning an e-ticket.

But commentators are calling for the UK’s railway system to introduce airport-style security in light of a knife attack on a train on Saturday.

This could include baggage scanners, which use high-energy X-rays to peek inside luggage, or even guards carrying pepper spray.

The attack, which led to 11 people being wounded, happened inside the 6.35pm service to London from Doncaster. Train engineers made an emergency stop at Huntingdon, where officers boarded the train.

When we asked Metro readers their thoughts on popping their bags into plastic trays before boarding a train, they were conflicted.

Chris Maynard commented on Metro‘s Facebook: ‘You need a tunnel X-ray machine to pick up weapons and CCTV operators monitoring in offices and ground level security to apprehend suspects, also facial recognition.’

Greg Austin added: ‘About time should have metal detectors on entering the station.’

How safe are trains?

More than five million train journeys happen in the UK every day, zipping around some 3,360 stations. CCTV cameras are standard on all trains.

Official data shows that while crime is uncommon, it is rising. Almost 80,000 offenses occurring at railway stations were recorded in 2023/24, with overall crime levels up 55% from 2014. 

Assaults on passengers and the public reached 9,542 incidents during the same period, a 17% increase compared to the year before, according to the Office of Rail and Road.

More than three-quarters of the assaults were harassment cases or common assault, which includes the threat of physical violence.

With crime on the up, other readers said that more pre-boarding checkpoints should be added to stations, such as sniffer dogs, but not quite on par with airports.

Some airports, for example, now have biometric border procedures, where parts of travellers’ bodies are scanned to confirm identity. This might be slightly too far for train stations, readers said, as would hours-long check-in processes.

‘Or maybe just have more transport police available at train stations all hours of the day,’ said Gemma James.

Would airport security be feasible at railway stations?

British Transport Police patrol trains and stations in the UK, but the force has fewer than 3,000 officers.

Dozens of BTP stations face possible closure amid a hiring freeze and funding shortfalls.

The force said in January that this means ‘it is inevitable that we will have fewer police officers and staff available to respond to crimes and incidents in the future’.

Will Geddes, a security specialist, doubts that building metal detectors and baggage carousels at stations would do much.

‘Nope, not feasible,’ Geddes told Metro when asked if airport-style security on trains should be considered. ‘Easily defeated and impractical to implement effectively.

‘Better to assign the security personnel to actually be on trains.’

Geddes added that, unlike airports, security measures in trains face different issues. Airports typically only have ‘single-controlled access points’, where the footfall can easily be monitored.

Train stations, meanwhile, may have multiple entrances, so ‘youths can bully and push themselves through, jumping over fences to the platform’.

Piggybacking, when someone tags along with another to gain access to an area, also called tailgating, could also likely happen, Geddes added.

And it seems the government feels the same –  the transport secretary has ruled out installing airport-style security scanners in stations this morning.

‘We have thousands of railway stations across the UK, and those stations have multiple entrances, multiple platforms,’ Heidi Alexander told Mornings with Ridge and Frost.

‘So what we can’t do is make life impossible for everyone.’

For Linda Reed, another Metro reader, she isn’t sure why such technology would be needed either.

She’s been riding British trains for the better part of three decades.

‘There has never been any kind of incident on any of the hundreds of journeys I have taken,’ she said.

‘Travelling by train is exceptionally safe.’

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