The abrupt resignation of Denise Tyrell as spokesperson for the Metrolink commuter train company in the aftermath of last Friday’s fatal crash in Chatsworth is indicative of the risk-averse political atmosphere of our region.
She had permission from the CEO, David Solow, to make the statement blaming Metrolink’s engineer.
Then when things heated up, her boss didn't stand up for her.
You'll note the Metrolink Board members are shifting their positions based on current information, always to make themselves look good.
Tyrell thought the customers were more important than the internal politics. She is a victim of some kind of dysfunctional culture at the agency.
I am Executive Secretary of Southern California Transit Advocates, but these opinions are solely my own.
Ari Noonan comments:
The most important development in the last six days is that every portion of Ms. Tyrell’s supposedly premature “It Was Our Fault” statement to the media on the morning-after has been validated.
It is crucial because an error by the engineer led to more than two dozen deaths.
This suggests that the exaggerated posturing by the four-person “It Can’t be Our Fault” choir was purely politically rooted and was apparently unrelated to a search for the truth. Bristling because she was outflanked by Ms. Tyrell, Kitty Higgins of the National Transportation Safety Board declared, airily, that it probably would be a year before the cause could be determined. Mr. Solow and Ron Roberts, chair of Metrolink’s board, frantically trying to hang on to their jobs, very publicly abandoned the vulnerable Ms. Tyrell after she had received approval to make the statement. In the process, the boys dinged their own already tarnished images.
Was anyone in Newspaperland surprised that Mayor Villaraigosa, who is politically correct right down to his breakfast cereal, behaved like a schoolboy instead of a grownup in the heat of the crisis? Every step of his day is calculated. With one eye on his next elective office, he strategically stepped out of range of the television cameras — probably for the first time in his career — when Ms. Tyrell made her admission statement last Saturday. This week, he fired and replaced two members of the Metrolink board.
Why? you ask.
The habitual incuriosity of Los Angeles Times reporters is exasperating, and it is a longstanding disservice to purveyors of news. For the gullible, the mayor said he canned the outgoing two members because he wanted to ensure that safety and agency transparency are top priorities. Is there one person in a million who swallows that? Was that why Mayor Villaraigosa incourageously ducked out of the picture last Saturday?
