The MTA has billions of dollars in their budget to run their railways, subways, and buses.  Metrolink use several hundreds of subcontractors.  To adhere to their tight budget, Metrolink uses contract workers in various capacities.  They contract for uniforms and internal audits.

NYTimes.com

But they also contract in some positions that directly impact the functioning of the trains, the train engineers and maintenance staff.
The Metrolink board includes 11 people that come from small cities across five counties.  They share expenses and work to connect their local transit networks.
Metrolink railways have passengers and freighter trains that share the same railways.

This creates another issue for board members to have to deal with and some of them have admitted that they lack the expertise they need to handle some of the problems they face.

There are board members that are asking the right questions.  Ron Roberts who is chairman of the board said that he has looked into whether or not an automated system was available that could stop the train in case of an emergency. He is also looking into a system that could take over control of a train in case the engineer becomes incapacitated.

The board will continue to look at safety improvement that could be implemented in their train system.

25 people died and 135 were injured in the Metrolink Train Crash on Friday September 12 in Chatsworth near Los Angeles.

Tags: 12, 135, 25, Chatsworth, died, injured, Los Angeles, Metrolink Train Crash on Friday, people, September