One Engineer, No Safety

Despite no new technological advances in safety Go Transit and Canadian National have decided to remove one of the locomotive engineers from each Lakeshore GO train.

Now Go Transit has made some really silly decisions in the past but this takes the cake. This
one may actually place customer safety in jeopardy. Some locomotive drivers do really long shifts, I know because often I have left in the late morning to go to Toronto and then in the late evening after a concert etc they are still on the train. A recent Metro article mentioned that they work 11 hour days.

Just a simple look at the Go Transit safety ads about crossing the tracks tells us that the Go Trains are moving intese energy and momentum.

I welcome comments about this decision here. I will be emailing Go Transit officials to notify Peter Smith, the Chairman of the Board of this blog. I will also be notiflying Lawrence Cannon, the minister of transport via the government email address mintc@tc.gc.ca

From talking to an individual that knows more than I do, the primary safety concerns are:

a) Excessive hours of duty and lengthy commutes by operators of GO Trains
i.e. Split Shifts, crew reporting for work in Mimico and then transported to distant yards

b) Lack of ATC (Automatic Trains Control) or ATS (Automatic Train Stop) on GO's network where single person (i.e. cab car forward movements) exist.

You can contact them directly using the following:

GO Transit Head Office
Phone (416) 869-3600
Fax (416) 869-3525
Unfortunately as the customer service supervisor (#606) informed me, go transit does not have a customer service email address so you have to go to the website and use the webform.

Honorable Lawrence Cannon
Minister of Transportation
phone (613) 991-0700
email: mintc@tc.gc.ca

Let's get the word out so Go Transit can make our commute a safe one.

I look forward to everyone commenting on this so we can let them know we care for the safety of our fellow passengers.