Veteran instructor Kimmo Eiranto marks 40 years training Tampere drivers

Eiranto's career began with a summer job at the Tampere City Transport workshop in June 1985 and has now reached 40 years in the Tampere city organisation, Tampere Vocational College (Tredu) said.

He moved from seasonal work to a permanent role, spending years on three-shift bus duties before his military service in Hämeenlinna. There he completed a CE truck driving licence and motor officer training. He returned to the transport workshop and in autumn 1989 trained as a bus driver, the start of a long driving career.

In 2011 he shifted into teaching, joining Tampere Vocational College as an instructor for bus drivers while the city expanded programmes to train adult drivers. The biggest change in his nearly 15 years as a teacher came when he became lead instructor for tram drivers; he learned to operate the trams alongside traffic controllers and studied tram technical systems. Tredu has since graduated about 150 tram drivers.

The expansion to rail traffic has been rewarding but also very stressful, Eiranto says, because even a small problem is immediately visible in Aamulehti. He describes the most rewarding moments as the ones after a student graduates and later calls to say they have secured steady employment. "The best thing in my work is to live a small moment with a student, walk alongside them when a job has dropped away, and later hear them call in a trembling voice that they have a permanent job," he says.

He stresses that despite technological change, with fewer cash transactions and more complex vehicles, empathy remains the driver's most important skill. His advice to new instructors is simple: care about your students. "They sense it, and things go well. Attitude and positivity decide everything," he says.