You might be surprised. Even the Humber College "Pro Rider" course was generally run in their parking lot and taught a lot of good skills. Low speed manoeuvring is tough stuff.
The higher speed "Peanut" was great in the afternoon, as well. It's a large double parking lot.
They run some parts through the centre strip and both lots, so there's lots of room.
Not yet....
While all of the basic rider training skills teach basic skills, they aren't all the same curriculum. There are privately owned courses and others run by the community colleges. Any that are approved to conduct the test are not-for-profit. The College programs are generally teaching the Canada Safety Council's "Gearing Up" program. CSC has been sponsoring a program since the 1970's, and the program continues to evolve with input from all of the colleges. Other programs have their own curriculum, which may have been developed in-house or licensed from somewhere else. RTI has been around for a long time now. In my experience, the common thread is the passion and dedication of the instructors. Some of the programs, like Humber, are very large programs with 60 to 80 students per weekend, other courses may have 10 to 20. For most people, attendance is generally a one-time thing, so it's important when someone recommends a program (or recommends against) a program, that you understand what they liked or didn't like. Every program tries to get it right for every student, but that's not always possible. Since any review is likely to be based on that single experience, you need to know if the positive/negative things are a part of the program, or an exception to the norm.
On this forum, there are a lot of opinions about the necessity of training. It's not cheap, but neither is the riding lifestyle, if you intend to have a decent bike and gear and proper insurance coverage. A weekend of training on a school bike and the resulting discount on your insurance will not seem like a lot of time or money spent after you start your own riding "career".
Many of the same people who opted out of training, ( I think ironically ),
complain about the lack of skill of drivers on the road.
I did three different courses at Humber North. The first one had over 100 students, years ago. It's going to be smaller, now that they've opened another site. We were broken down into groups of 10 with two instructors and our own parking lot each. The entire class had the same bike, so the only difference between most bikes, was the clutch balance point. There were also modified bikes for larger/taller people, if you asked.
This course was designed to get one started at being able to ride on the road, so many of the manoeuvres were low speed, and to help one maintain control. There's a somewhat low speed test at the end to upgrade you license.
The m2 exit course actually takes you out on the street for part of it to practice for the test. There are specific areas like a big curve etc.
A track course would be aimed more at preparing one to ride on the track.
There would be no license upgrade, unless they're teaching the road course.
I don't think that any do this yet.
I met some people at the course who vehemently disagreed with their mark, but didn't hear any complaints about instructors. I imagine any who had any kind of social issues would be asked to work cones or demonstrate first, and not asked back later. Not that I've heard of that happening.
One of the issues that no one's mentioned so far, is the other students. Some of them are real hot shots who know everything about everything, and can't be taught. In a larger school (eg Humber North), there would be more opportunity to move around if there's a personality conflict.
