By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 28 2000 (IPS)

Life in the mega-city of Sao Paulo, with its traffic-choked avenues, is a daily exercise in patience, but the situation would be worse without the army of workers waging war on traffic jams with information as the principal weapon.

The city has benefited for the last 25 years from the Traffic Engineering Company (CET), which plans and operates the urban road system, seeking ways to ensure the most efficient circulation of vehicles possible. But even with its efforts, by 1999 the average rush hour saw 115 km of traffic congestion, 25 km more than in 1996.

The average speed of vehicles in Sao Paulo has fallen by a similar ratio. On the major roads leading from the neighbourhoods to the centre, morning rush-hour traffic averaged 28.1 km per hour in 1994, but fell to 22 kph in 1999, while afternoon traffic moved at just 18.8 kph.

The fight against this trend – caused by the increasing number of vehicles on city streets – has mobilised 3,900 CET employees, and a great deal of electronic equipment. The battlefield is 14,600 km of roads saturated by 4.9 million cars in a city of 10 million people.

The operation is entrusted to some 900 ‘marronzinhos’ (brownies, for the colour of their uniforms), guards, technicians and engineers who attempt to control traffic, slap fines on offenders and remove obstacles from the streets. In 1999, they were involved in an average of 681 interventions each weekday, mostly towing stalled vehicles.

A group of CET workers make up the vanguard in the field, manning 50 posts on top of buildings to watch for traffic problems and call information in to the centre of operations, said Eliana Haberli, CET spokeswoman.

More than 100 video cameras also gather information at road intersections and other strategic points, while another 90 monitor action in the city’s tunnels.

In addition, a group of volunteers, who numbered 1,254 at the end of 1999, report on irregularities at intersections or malfunctioning traffic lights.

The general population also participates by calling in problems on a toll-free line. Last year there were an average of 132,820 calls per month, 50 percent more than in 1998.

Concerts, fairs and demonstrations are other enemies of free- flowing traffic. There were 2,898 such events in 1999. The CET also had to assess the impact of 219 major projects last year, such as the construction of shopping centre, which create further traffic and alter the flow of vehicles through the city.

All of this information helps millions of drivers make their way through the daily obstacle course of city streets. Four radio stations are dedicated mainly to helping the Sao Paulo public drive to their destinations taking the easiest route.

The stations broadcast frequent bulletins, announcing which roads are the most congested and suggesting alternatives. To do so, they use data provided by CET, but also have their own helicopters circling the city.

“The traffic reports have helped me many times,” said journalist Adalberto Marcondes. “But their effectiveness lies in how well they know the city, so they can identify alternative routes in the tangle of Sao Paulo.”

Traffic information is vital for taxi drivers in the city. In addition to receiving and using it, taxi drivers organised into co- operatives share data with their colleagues through an internal radio system while also providing first-hand information, said Roberto Penteado, head of a taxi company with 120 cars.

The job of guiding drivers through traffic turned out to be “very important for the recovery of the radio industry,” said journalist Jayme Brener, owner of a communications consulting firm.

The immediate broadcast of traffic information has become an indispensable service in a city like Sao Paulo, forcing drivers to pay constant attention to the radio.

Because the radio audience for this service is generally higher income – people who can afford cars to get to and from work -, radio advertising prices have shot up, said Brener.

The buying power of the listeners also justifies the stations’ expenditures that allow them to report from the air. “On the busiest days, Radio Eldorado has up to four helicopters flying over the city,” Haberli said.

“Soon there will be traffic jams in the air,” joked media specialist Marcondes.

The CET has plans, “just dreams for now,” of installing information monitors along major routes and at strategic points that would let commuters know what lies ahead, what traffic conditions they can expect farther down the road, said the municipal traffic control spokeswoman.

Currently, such monitors have been installed at the entrance of some of the city’s tunnels to indicate when they will be closed, and in areas that tend to flood during heavy rains – another frequent problem in Sao Paulo.

“An informed driver behaves better, even if he knows he will be trapped for several hours,” said Haberli, pointing out that not knowing why there is a traffic jam or how long it will last causes a great deal of stress, especially when there is no chance to turn around or look for other routes.

This is why the information monitors are important, and have proven useful in Europe and the United States, but it is not known when they will be installed here because the project lacks financing, lamented Haberli.

The CET also provides traffic information on its website, but it is of limited use as Internet access in vehicles is not yet practical. In the meantime, radios will continue to play a key role in preventing increased traffic congestion and the CET recommends that all drivers listen to traffic reports.

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