Commuters in Jersey City, N.J., who want to take the PATH train into New York City, must now walk through a metal detector and have their bags screened via an X-ray machine before boarding the train, under a test program run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The $1 million test program, (PDF) which began Monday and will run through March 1, operates in the Exchange Place PATH station, where all passengers must be screened. The metal detectors have reportedly been desensitized so that keys and loose change will not set them off, and passengers don’t have to remove their shoes. Still, the process takes 30 seconds to 1 minute per passenger.

Even so, the so-called security measure seems ineffective, according to local residents.

“It didn’t take as long as I thought it would,” said Jessica Salles, 31, a lawyer headed to Manhattan who said she was surprised that just her bag was scanned.

“What about my coat?” Salles said. “It seems like a false sense of security.”

James Simpson, 53, a messenger from New York who carried a large blue gym bag, agreed.

“I don’t think this is going to do anything,” Simpson said. “This is just to make people feel better. You can’t be on every train.” — Associated Press

So we have a program which blew a cool million on a false sense of security. How many more millions must we lose to useless, feel-good measures which do nothing useful to provide real security and only waste your money?