The incident aboard a running Tokaido Shinkansen bullet train on Tuesday — in which a man doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire, killing himself and another passenger and injuring 26 others — was both shocking and frightening. It was the worst-ever incident involving a shinkansen in terms of the number of victims and the first involving a fire.

Eliminating the possibility of such incidents may be impossible, given the limitations to security measures that can be taken without sacrificing the convenience and accessibility of railway services. But operators of the shinkansen, and other public transit systems for that matter, should explore ways and means to minimize the risk of acts that endanger the lives of passengers and to limit the damage of such acts when they are committed.

The incident occurred around 11:30 a.m. while the Nozomi 225 from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka was traveling between Shin-Yokohama and Odawara. Haruo Hayashizaki, a 71-year-old resident of Suginami Ward, Tokyo, poured gasoline from a plastic container over himself and set it alight in the front section of the No. 1 car, killing himself. A 52-year-old woman from Yokohama who was traveling to Ise Shrine to give thanks for her "peaceful life" died from suffocation after suffering throat burns while trying to escape the smoke-filled car.

The incident shows just how easily the actions of a single passenger can endanger the lives of many others onboard a train, to say nothing of seriously snarling the shinkansen lines that form the main railway arteries in Honshu and Kyushu. Some 424,000 passengers a day use the Tokaido Shinkansen Line alone, which operates up to 15 train runs per hour. The fire on the Nozomi 225 knocked out 43 train runs and delayed 106 by as much as 4½ hours, affecting 94,000 passengers.

A 16-car bullet train can carry more than 1,300 passengers, which makes fire prevention incredibly important. Thankfully, the fire on Tuesday's Nozomi 225 did not spread to any of the other cars. A major reason why is because the transport ministry and shinkansen operators had learned a lesson from a 2003 incident in South Korea in which a man spread gasoline in a subway train and set it on fire, killing or injuring some 350 people. Japan Rail firms now use interior materials designed not to melt even when exposed to intense heat, and have installed a mechanism that closes the doors between cars when needed. Still, the passengers in the first three cars on Tuesday had to evacuate toward the rear of the train in great horror and confusion.

It is prohibited by law to bring dangerous materials like gasoline aboard a train, but no baggage inspections are carried out to ensure this is followed. Security measures like the ones taken at airports on airline passengers would not be practical given the massive number and flow of passengers at railway stations. It would be impossible to maintain the current tight schedule that bullet trains run on. But the JR firms need to realize that shinkansen can be easy targets of attack — terrorist and otherwise — and take as many practical measures as possible to step up security.

Some European countries that have experienced bombings on railways and other public transport systems in the 2000s have introduced baggage examinations and X-ray checks for train passengers. Even if performing such baggage checks is too impractical for shinkansen operators given the number of passengers, they should at least beef up such security measures as patrolling inside stations and aboard trains, monitoring what's happening in stations and train cars via security cameras, and improving the fire fighting equipment aboard trains. They must do their utmost to reconcile both the safety and convenience of railway passengers.