(GO Transit issued the following news release on May 27.)
TORONTO — For the second year running, GO Transit has won two prestigious transportation awards.
One of GO’s bus drivers, Len Cook, is Ontario Passenger Transportation Employee of the Year, and GO won an Award of Excellence for its safety program targeting people who deliberately disobey railway crossing signals and signs.
The awards are from the Ontario committee of National Transportation Week (NTW), which recognizes the hundreds of thousands of men and women who keepCanada moving safely, efficiently, and reliably.
Ontario’s Minister of Transportation, Frank Klees, presented the awards at NTW’s annual kickoff breakfast in Toronto this morning.
“The people who work in transportation have made outstanding contributions to the prosperity of our province,” Klees said. “I’m proud to be here today to honour GO Transit with these two awards.”
“We’re very proud of this recognition by our peers in the transportation industry,” said Dr. Gordon Chong, GO’s Chairman. “Being honoured with two awards again is a great tribute to the skills and dedication of our staff – the people who make GO Transit one of the safest and best transit services anywhere.”
(Last year GO won an NTW award for its anti-lock brake training program, and another GO driver was also passenger transportation employee of the year.)
This year’s winner, Len Cook, began his driving career in the trucking industry in 1967 and joined GO in 1990. He drives in the Oshawa GO Bus corridor and has 36 years of safe driving under his belt, all of them collision-free.
Cook has earned two consecutive internal awards for outstanding performance, which recognize employees for excellent attendance and exemplary customer service skills. He was also GO’s Driver of the Year in 2002.
The excellence award is for GO Transit’s near-collision reporting program, a new tool to let GO Train and trackwork crews record information about drivers, and pedestrians, who try to “beat the train” at railway crossings – behaviour which often ends in tragedy.
The information recorded helps GO Transit Enforcement or the railway police lay trespassing charges. Even if no charges are laid, a near-collision notice is sent to the vehicle’s registered owner with details of the violation and rail safety information.
The program, based on a similar one developed by Canadian Pacific Railway for freight crews, focuses on GO’s commuter train services and is designed to maximize employee involvement.