With the sun coming up on Sept. 12, 2001, state Transportation Secretary John D. Porcari drove home for a change of clothes after a day of helping direct Maryland’s response to the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people the previous morning.

“I remember saying to myself that the world will never be the same, and that’s certainly true of the transportation world,” said Porcari, now deputy secretary in theU.S. Department of Transportation.

Sweeping changes that have affected virtually every mode of transportation in the United States began almost immediately after hijacked airliners slammed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon outside Washington and a farm field in Pennsylvania.

They are continuing to this day, and there is no end in sight — especially at airports.

To board flights at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, Marylanders must take off their shoes and submit to a much more intrusive scan or pat-down than they ever would have imagined before the attacks. If they’re carrying bottled water or an oversized tube of toothpaste, they can expect to be flagged by officers of the Transportation Security Administration — an agency born out of the airport security failures of Sept. 11.

“Taking the shoes off has a certain herding-the-cattle aspect to it. It’s kind of undignified,” said Baltimore architect Klaus Philipsen, a frequent traveler who had to surrender several Swiss Army knives at security gates when the restrictions were new. “In the beginning, I kept forgetting.”

It’s not just air travelers who have been affected. Across the nation, Sept. 11′s legacy is a heightened awareness of security — and much more scrutiny from government.

When transit riders board MARC, Metro or light rail trains in Baltimore, or when motorists drive through tunnels under Baltimore’s harbor, they are much more likely to come under video surveillance. Amtrak passengers are more likely to see officers with bomb-sniffing

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