Adapted from a post on the Metrolinx news blog.

The mandatory vaccination policy for GO Transit train crews who are employees of Alstom is now in effect.

Alstom employees are subject to that company’s own mandatory vaccination mandate, as Metrolinx requires. More than 96 per cent are already fully vaccinated. They must also follow all the same health and safety protocols as Metrolinx employees, including mandatory medical masks, daily health screening and rapid testing, if necessary.

The Alstom mandatory vaccination mandate came into effect Sunday, December 5. This may result in some crew shortages.

Although most of the [more than] 1,000 Alstom employees working on trains are fully vaccinated, losing even a small percentage of crew members, during the current labour-market shortages, will, unfortunately, result in GO having to adjust a few train trips, with buses operating in place of [trains].

Currently GO provides as many as 500 daily train trips — of those, Metrolinx believes it can limit the adjustments to about two per cent of all trips. Metrolinx says it will communicate to passengers the night before and early the next day if there it plans to change train service along lines.

According to Metrolinx, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the regional transit agency has had strict health and safety protocols in place to protect staff and passengers. It says it’s continuing to make sure it can provide service so that people can get to where they need to go safely by notifying passengers when it can’t avoid service adjustments cannot be avoided, maintaining the busiest trips as much as possible and making sure bus service is available to replace cancelled trains.