NEW YORK (AP) – U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner said Sunday that transit officials should comply with a 2004 directive from the Department of Homeland Security and install bomb-resistant trash cans in the city’s 468 subway stations.

“Explosions on the subway platform are horrific events because so many people are gathered on the platform,” said Weiner, a Democrat representing parts of Brooklyn and Queens.

He said other cities including Atlanta, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., have installed the bomb-resistant trash cans in their transit systems in an effort to minimize the impact of an attack such as the one that killed 191 people in Madrid in 2004.

Weiner, posing next to one of the types of bomb-resistant trash cans now on the market, said the Metropolitan Transportation Authority could pay for the new cans using some of the $1.086 billion in federal funds it has received for security improvements.

A spokesman for New York City Transit did not immediately return a call seeking comment Sunday, but the agency has said that the bomb-resistant trash cans are inappropriate for an underground system because they would direct the force of an explosion straight up, into the ceiling and the floors above.

Weiner said that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

“The purpose of containing the explosion is to keep people on the platform and on the trains out of harm’s way,” he said.

“The idea that the energy would be redirected upward is exactly the point of what you would want to be doing. … There’s going to be damage when there’s a bomb on a platform but the idea is to keep it as much as possible from taking lives.”