One point to be made about Solow's retention is that it's for 6 months at current salary, which is roughly what they'd pay for severance at that level anyhow. What he signs as part of the deal, I'm sure, is a release from any lawsuits. Considering the cost of a lawsuit (which Metrolink would no doubt farm out to O'Melveny & Myers), this keeps the payout down to a dull roar. Can't really expect much more in this day and age.

The problem I see with Chatsworth is that, in the military, the general or admiral in charge is eventually the one who gets the axe. That should have been done with Solow on principle right away, it seems to me. So Solow instituted testing -- AFTER Chatsworth. And only one of the subsequent safety violations that made the news was due to a test -- the one early this month was just another bozo running a red light. What lessons were learned???

In the matter of corporate culture, as a railfan and interested follower of such issues, I hear from time to time that there are safe operations and not safe ones. I read, for instance, that Rayonier Lumber was a remarkably safe operation in a business that's normally extremely dangerous. I read now and then too that if you worked for Conductor X on Railroad Y, you never got in trouble. Seems logical to me. But Solow, for all his good intentions, doesn't seem to have made any actual progress over safety, as the December violation attests.