THUNDER BAY -- The City of Thunder Bay is in the market for its first truck and bus driver training simulator for city employees.
The move to purchase the equipment comes just weeks after it was announced that the province had lowered the city's commercial vehicle safety rating to "conditional" for the first time, because of the number of infractions by drivers.
But fleet services manager Jim Suffak says the acquisition has been in the planning stage for years, and funding only became available recently through the Federal Transit Infrastructure Program.
The simulator will cost "a few hundred thousand dollars," according to Suffak, and will be installed at the Thunder Bay Transit garage.
The city's commercial fleet vehicles are used by more than 500 operators and include nearly 200 light- and heavy-duty trucks and trailers, heavy duty waste collection vehicles and transit buses.
Suffak told tbnewswatch.com the simulator will be used for training and refresher courses both for novice drivers and seasoned drivers on a regular basis.
The specialized equipment provides an advantage over on-the-road training in that it can safely create scenarios of all kinds, such as bad road and weather conditions, overhanging hazards, mechanical breakdowns, pedestrians running into traffic, glare from sunlight and sharp corners.
"It's a tool we would use instead of driving on the road. There are a number of options with a simulator that cannot be done in a live situation," Suffak said.
Although the purchase is coincidental to the recent lowering of the city's safety rating, he noted the device will also be used "for testing on drivers that have got a higher safety risk...so that we can do some analysis on how they perform before the simulator training and after."
The city has contracted for some simulator training from the private sector in the past, but having its own equipment means that it can set it up specifically for municipal applications.
"This will enhance the training programs that we already have," Suffak said. The acquisition is not solely to deal with the safety rating, he reiterated, but "it will provide additional tools and resources to improve the rating" and improve driver performance.
It's expected to be about another year before the simulator is installed and operational.
