A Metrobus stop on 9 de Julio avenue in Buenos Aires, with the famous Obelisk in the background. Credit: Juan Moseinco/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jan 6 2014 (IPS)

Sustainable transport grew in the Latin American cities of Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro in 2013.

The left-wing government of the Mexican capital inaugurated the fifth Metrobús bus rapid transit (BRT) system route and extended the Ecobici Individual Transport System.

It also expanded the Ecoparq parking meter system – a new parking management scheme – into new areas on the west side of the city and opened up a new pedestrian-only street in the old city.

In the Argentine capital, meanwhile, the third Metrobús line began to operate with great success on Avenida 9 de Julio, and the government expanded its “Buenos Aires, mejor en bici” (Buenos Aires, Better by Bike) programme.

In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the centre-right city government forged ahead with the construction of the Transcarioca and Transbrasil BRT corridors, while the second stage of the Transoeste BRT project got underway.

The network of bicycle paths was also enlarged, as part of the infrastructure planned for the FIFA World Cup, to be held in Brazil from Jun. 12 to Jul. 13, and the 2016 Olympic summer games in Rio de Janeiro.

In Mexico City, “there have been interesting projects, but they haven’t been carried out at the desired speed,” Bernardo Baranda, Latin America director for the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), told IPS.

He called for more initiatives and said they should be more rapidly implemented, aimed at “a further reduction of the use of automobiles” in greater Mexico City, home to more than 20 million people.

As part of that objective, he said it was important to expand Ecobici, which includes exclusive and non-exclusive bike lanes as well as a bike-share system.

What is happening in greater Rio de Janeiro, population 11.7 million, “is very exciting,” he said. “A great deal has been invested in infrastructure. Bicycle use has expanded. The centre has great potential for better transport conditions.”

The ITDP Latin America director said that in greater Buenos Aires, home to some 13 million people, “the use of public bicycles has been fomented, along with the idea of turning several streets in the microcenter into pedestrian-only.”

Roberto Remes, an independent Mexican expert in public policies on the environment and transportation, also pointed to interesting developments in the three cities.

He explained to IPS that in Buenos Aires, right-wing Mayor Mauricio Macri “is trying to build an alternative system to the subway,” which turned 100 years old in December.

Meanwhile, “in Mexico we see mainly plans. Apparently we’ll do ok, we’ll have an integrated system with policies focused on mobility and a person-oriented, rather than car-oriented, perspective.”

With respect to Rio de Janeiro, he said “they want their prepaid public fare cards and their institutional image to be the same across the entire country – something that not many countries have achieved.”

The three cities face similar challenges, such as heavy dependence on private vehicles, the proliferation of parking garage buildings, and virtually no progress on road safety, except in the case of Buenos Aires.

In addition, there have been social protests against the infrastructure work accompanying the development of sustainable, multimodal transportation systems.

Baranda said “the bicycle must be better integrated with mass transit, and more integrated transport is needed in order to make it easier to get around.”

On Jan. 15, the ITDP and eight other organisations will grant the Sustainable Transport Award in Washington, DC. This year’s nominees include Buenos Aires, Lanzhou, China and Suwon, South Korea. Mexico City won the award in 2013.

The prize, granted since 2005 to cities of more than 500,000 people, awards accomplishments such as improving public transportation and public spaces, reducing transport-related air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and improving safety and access for cyclists and pedestrians.

This year, the Mexico City government will build another Metrobús line and will expand segregated and non-segregated bike paths.

For its part, the ITDP will focus on reducing the number of parking garages, and drew up a study on the viability of a Metrobús line on the central Avenida Reforma.

For the 2013-2016 period, the Rio de Janeiro city administration plans to build 150 km of bike paths, as well as bicycle parking stations, to reach a total network of 450 km by 2016.

Buenos Aires projects the creation of another four Metrobús routes for 2014-2015.

The December report on “Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts of BRT Systems” stresses the benefits of bus rapid transit in Bogotá, Colombia; Mexico City; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Istanbul, Turkey.

The report was produced by EMBARQ, the sustainable urban transport and planning programme of the World Resources Institute (WRI).

The study shows that BRT systems have led to travel time savings, a reduction in vehicle operating costs, improvements in health due to reduced pollution, and improved road safety.

But it also identifies challenges such as declining quality of service, the exclusion of the poorest residents from the system, limited integration with other transport systems, and competition with subways.

Remes warned that it was not enough to focus transport strategies on merely establishing BRT systems without addressing other possibilities, such as urban trains.

“The existing models of financing, management and planning only allow for the expansion of these systems. If we create BRT corridors, we can cover the cities in a decade, but there is still a problem: transfers and switches from one system to another. There’s something that’s not working in the long-term vision,” he said.

In the 1970s, nations like Japan, South Korea or Singapore began to build railway networks to foment a mix of transport, employment, financing and economic development in big cities.

In Latin America, “we are a millennium behind,” Remes lamented.

Mass transit is still impossible in the narrow streets of Rio de Janeiro’s hillside favelas. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 25 2013 (IPS)

The TransBrasil bus rapid transit system, which will connect poor suburbs with the centre of Rio de Janeiro, will be the high-speed bus corridor that serves the largest number of commuters in the world.

The massive infrastructure works in Rio de Janeiro in preparation for mega-events like the 2016 Olympic Games opened a window for experts to propose to the authorities a baptism of fire: learn about sustainable urban mobility – or better yet, transit-oriented development.

Another gap was opened up by the mass protests that broke out in June in Rio and other cities, initially triggered by the problems plaguing mass transit in Brazil’s major cities.

Images of bumper-to-bumper traffic and queues hundreds of metres long of people waiting for the subway made their way around the world during Pope Francis’ visit to Rio in July.

Although transit-oriented development (TOD) may seem like a new concept, it is not, Robert Cervero, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Berkeley, told Tierrámerica.*

“The idea is how do we take advantage of these massive and expensive public investments in BRT [bus rapid transit] and in rail to make our communities more sustainable, with cleaner air, making cities more liveable, and bringing public health benefits,” he said. “In America we have a huge obesity epidemic and it is partly because we drive too much and walk too little.”

TOD refers to a mixed-use residential and commercial area designed to maximise access to public transport, often including features to encourage the use of mass transit.

The TransBrasil dedicated bus corridor will be 32 km long and will carry an estimated 820,000 commuters a day. The budget is 570 million dollars, and the project, still in the bidding process, is scheduled to take 36 weeks.

“We have to adapt and adjust to each city, each culture,” Cervero said.

“The idea of TOD is to really focus on the [transformational] capacity of bus rapid transit corridors, subway and metros. And the stations become the focal point for organising redevelopment, mixing land uses: housing, jobs, restaurants,” the expert said.

“You want people to walk and bike. You try to make socially engaging places. The best TOD is more than places to get on and off trains and buses. There are civic spaces, places where people congregate, open markets, safe and comfortable places.”

Organising two global events like the 2014 FIFA World Cup or the 2016 Olympics “is a once in a generation opportunity…a huge opportunity that you don’t want to squander,” Cervero said.

But the most important thing is “what happens afterwards,” he stressed. “Hopefully after the sporting events are over, the mass public investments in infrastructure…will serve neighbourhoods, communities and people. That requires planning. It really takes leadership because we are talking about multiple jurisdictional contexts.”

Cervero was in Brazil to attend the “we are the cities” seminar organised Sept. 18 by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) to urge local authorities and political leaders to rethink the potential of TransBrasil .

According to the head of ITDP Brazil, Clarisse Linke, this “urban redesign” has not been done in Rio, where it is still a distant idea.

The number of vehicles per capita in Rio has soared over the last decade, to 2.5 million today, and is estimated to rise to three million by 2015. Rio de Janeiro proper has a population of 6.4 million.

On average, people in this city spend an hour and a half commuting every day. But many spend much more time – up to four to six hours a day.

“The big question is how to integrate urban planning with transportation, to make a more equitable and liveable city,” Linke told Tierramérica.

TransBrasil will follow a key route linking the suburbs with the centre: Av. Brasil, a major thoroughfare that runs through dozens of poor neighbourhoods.

“Today that avenue is a scar across a run-down part of the city,” Linke said. “The BRT corridor can revitalise all of the neighbourhoods near the stations.”

BRT, now used in dozens of cities across the globe, was first invented in Brazil. It was pioneered in the southern city of Curitiba in 1974 and is now an international model for sustainable transport.

Traffic in Rio is chaotic, Maria Luiza Korenchendler, an official with the Rio municipal urban planning secretariat, acknowledged. But once the TransBrasil is completed, the time it takes to commute from the suburbs to the city centre will be reduced by 40 percent, she said.

“The big urban transformation will be to create an area of special urban planning interest around Av. Brasil,” she told Tierramérica.

Cervero said: “I’ve been to Brazil many times. Brazil is a very rapidly industrialising and modernising country where a lot of people are buying cars.

“You could also avoid the problems we’ve had in North America [where we have] really extremely automobile-dependent cities.”

BRT has the advantage of cutting commuting time, discouraging the use of cars, and making it possible to transport large numbers of people at very low cost, he said.

“Our experience shows that it doesn’t take a lot of money,” he said. “You need a plan to orchestrate the development and public commitments in order for private investors to follow.

“There is a real chance in Brazil to create and revitalise industrial districts. It takes leadership and it takes time. It is a very bottom- up participatory process, you’ve got to engage local residents and they have to have a sense of ownership in creating this.”

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Excerpt:

Bus rapid transit lanes like this one in the west of Rio de Janeiro are relatively low cost and easy to implement. Credit: ITDP/Leonardo Miguel Silva Martins

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 9 2013 (IPS)

Bus lanes, cycle paths and pedestrian walkways are viable solutions to the transport collapse in Brazil’s big cities. But economic interests, red tape and the lack of strategies for an integrated system are delaying a process that the protests raging across the country for the last few weeks have made an urgent issue.

“Traffic is terrible in Rio de Janeiro; it’s much faster to use my bike, and I get exercise at the same time,” film producer Miriam Gerber, who cycles to and from work, to go shopping or just to go for rides, told IPS.

But traffic and the scarcity of bike paths can often transform a pleasant ride into a hellish experience.

“The traffic is dreadful. Cars drive very close together and they don’t slow down when they see you. A lot of people are hit by cars. Since our bodies are our bumpers, we haven’t got a chance,” said Gerber.

The urban transport policy in this country of over 198 million people has prioritised car use since the 1960s, building more and more freeways and limiting the options for pedestrians and cyclists.

Recent tax exemptions to stimulate car sales had a positive effect on economic growth, income and employment.

But at the same time, they created the spectre of breakneck growth in the national vehicle fleet.

The number of automobiles in Brazil’s 12 largest cities increased by 890,000 a year between 2001 and 2011, according to the Observatório das Metrópoles, a think tank. Whereas Brazil’s population grew by 11 percent in that decade, annual registration of new vehicles rose by 120 percent, says a report by The Economist, a British newspaper.

“In a collapse like this one, cities lose out heavily in economic, productive, environmental and social terms,” Clarisse Linke, the head of the Brazil office of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), which works for sustainable and equitable transport worldwide, told IPS.

“Transport is a key question in making cities socially fair and equitable. This whole wave of demonstrations began precisely because of the debate about transport and social justice. Our country is growing economically, but our cities are increasingly unjust,” she said.

Leftwing Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff announced in 2012 that she would prioritise public transport in big cities, with joint investment with state and municipal governments amounting to 16 billion dollars. The plan would include 600 kilometres of roads, 200 kilometres of railway tracks, 381 terminals and the purchase of light rail carriages.

In the same year a law on urban mobility was passed, setting out guidelines for sustainability and the democratisation of public spaces. The law prioritises collective transport and establishes that all cities of over 20,000 people must draw up transport plans covering up to 2015. However, few cities have begun to get organised.

“This problem is deeply rooted in Brazil, as well as in other Latin American countries: there is corruption, bureaucratic machinery that slows things down, and lack of clarity or vision about the role of transportation in the future of these cities,” Linke said.

Orlando dos Santos Júnior, an expert on urban planning at the Observatório das Metrópoles, added further reasons in an interview with IPS.

For instance, in Rio de Janeiro, “big systems are being built (in the city proper) that are not integrated with outlying areas. It is obvious there are going to be negative effects, because it is a misguided and irrational plan that wastes public money, reflecting the subordination of the municipal government to powerful economic interests.”

ITDP supports investment in bus rapid transit (BRT) lanes, which are relatively low cost and have a short lead time.

The southern city of Curitiba pioneered BRT systems, combining high-quality stations, overland bus transport and real- time information systems with dedicated lanes for buses and high-capacity vehicles. The buses are clean and comfortable, and passengers pay their fare before embarking, reducing the wait time for departures from stops, Linke said.

A score of Brazilian cities have plans to build BRT systems. São Paulo has its Expresso Tiradentes, the southern city of Belo Horizonte is building two lanes, and Rio de Janeiro inaugurated one in 2012 and has three more under construction.

However, the needs of the populace were not met, Santos criticised. “What we are seeing is that the large cities are preparing to welcome the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games,” he said.

ITDP also supports the need for integrating large transport systems like subways or trains with BRT lanes and the promotion of cycling and walking.

Ze Lobo, the head of Transporte Ativo, a local NGO, said bicycles are an immediate solution for transport needs up to distances of five to seven kilometres.

“The more we use them, the quicker the authorities will have to create infrastructure for bicycles,” he told IPS.

Lobo said “the big problem is still the lack of understanding among city engineering departments and other authorities of the importance of bicycles.” In addition to cycle paths, investment is needed on access routes and parking spaces for cycles in train stations.

But the problem is not just transport; it extends to urban planning as well. “People should live and work in the same place, to avoid unnecessary commuting. Increasing multiple use planning permission could bring about a 30 percent decline in average kilometres of car travel per person per day,” said Linke.

Expanding the railway systems is another challenge. According to an industry association report on metropolitan railways, passenger numbers are growing faster than facilities on the network, causing serious overcrowding for the population.

Trains and subways transported nine million passengers a day in 2012, 3.8 percent more than in 2011. This year passenger numbers are forecast to rise by 10 percent, indicating a need for investment over and above existing plans.

In parallel, according to both Linke and Lobo, car use must be actively discouraged, for instance by limiting parking places or restricting vehicle traffic at peak hours.

Otherwise, traffic safety will no longer be a problem for cyclists, Lobo joked. “If nothing is done, in a few years it will be absolutely safe to pedal between cars that are completely stationary, in total gridlock.”

Articulated bus in dedicated lane, part of the BRT system in Curitiba, Brazil. Credit: Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz Mariordo CC BY 3.0

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 30 2013 (IPS)

Brazil, and especially the city of Rio de Janeiro, is experiencing a boom in bus rapid transit (BRT), a public transport system that now has an internationally-recognised quality standard.

According to Brazil’s National Association of Urban Transport (NTU), there are 113 BRT projects in 25 cities, with 1,270 kilometres of dedicated bus lanes. By 2016 they should all be operative.

“BRT is the star of sustainable transport; it is an environmentally friendly, economical solution for big cities that have serious congestion problems,” Helena Orenstein, the country director for Brazil of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), told IPS.

The system does not exclude other methods of transport; on the contrary, it creates an integrated network of different kinds of transportation, Orenstein said.

But a common definition and quality assurance were previously lacking, she added.

The ITDP helped formulate quality guidelines known as the BRT Standard, in partnership with a commission of experts and various organisations.

The BRT Standard, launched in March, analyses and gives points for 32 items divided into six categories, such as service planning, infrastructure, integration and access, as well as others which carry negative points, like overcrowding or lack of maintenance.

The result is a tool with common parameters of quality control for BRT all over the world, which will also guide and motivate improvements in these transport systems, according to Orenstein.

“The idea is that BRT should deliver an excellent form of transport, paying attention to the requirements of safety, comfort and practicality. It’s about time people no longer had to waste three hours a day to commute across cities,” said the head of the Brazilian office of the ITDP, an NGO that offers technical support in a number of countries.

The quality certification functions as a checklist that adds or subtracts points and is easily understood by authorities, consultants and operators.

The BRT Standard issues bronze (55-69 points), silver (70-84 points) or gold (85-100 points) certificates.

The aim is “to certify BRT systems that are already operating in order to correct any flaws and reward good examples,” Orenstein said.

Pedro Torres, the ITDP’s urban development manager in Brazil, explained that a technical committee would carry out annual reviews and updating of the certifications.

Following pilot trials in 2012, the first full certification exercise this year analysed 67 BRT systems in 41 cities in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Ecuador, France, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and the United States. Twelve of them were awarded gold certificates, 28 silver and 24 bronze.

The remaining three systems, two in the U.S. city of Pittsburgh and one in New Delhi, India, did not earn enough points for the bronze certificate but met the minimum requirements to be regarded as “basic BRT systems.”

Among those that won gold, the highest points were earned by the Zhongshan Avenue BRT in the Chinese city of Guangzhou; four TransMilenio services in Bogotá, Colombia; and the Linha Verde (Green Line) in Curitiba, the Brazilian city that pioneered this type of mass transport in 1974.

“It was a very positive experience. It’s an opportunity for society, governments and companies to have a public evaluation and monitoring tool for these systems,” Torres told IPS.

The head of NTU, Otávio Cunha, praised the BRT Standard initiative and said the NTU has passed the list of items to be evaluated on to its members.

“We are in favour of dedicated bus lanes as a sustainable transport option that has a higher cost-benefit ratio. The idea of a quality standard is a good one,” Cunha told IPS.

Traffic creates stress, increases the accident rate and causes economic “disbenefits” because of the waste of fuel and time involved in urban transportation, he said.

“Brazil is going through a mobility crisis and there is too much fuel and time wasted in cities because of traffic. Dedicated bus lanes can make journeys faster. BRTs are a new concept in surface public transport, inspired by the requirements for excellence in underground rail systems,” he said.

A dedicated corridor can transport 10,000 passengers an hour by bus, compared to only 750 by car. A bus can take all its passengers on board in barely 15 seconds before leaving a station.

In many cities, the time interval between buses can be as little as 20 seconds, making the service highly efficient. In Brazilian BRT systems, the interval between buses may be two minutes, Cunha said. One busload of passengers can replace 120 cars, he said.

Another benefit is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle traffic. In Mexico City the BRT system, which is 20 kilometres long, has reduced the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from traffic by 80,000 tonnes a year, according to the ITDP.

Constructing BRT systems takes time and money, but much less of both than a subway line, which can take up to 10 years to build.

Building and equipping 10 kilometres of BRT takes an average of 18 months and 10 times less money than a metro line.

Brazil’s 113 BRT projects, operating in 25 cities, represent 30 percent of total BRT systems already functioning all over the world, according to NTU estimates.

The government’s current investment commitments amount to six billion dollars, including what it has already spent. By the end of 2013, more projects in medium-sized cities will bring the total to nearly nine billion dollars.

Four new BRT projects are under way in Rio de Janeiro: TransCarioca, with 39 stations, which is to be inaugurated in December at a cost of 900 million dollars; TransBrasil, with 25 stations, which began to be constructed in 2012 at a cost of 600 million dollars; TransOeste, with 64 stations, the second phase of which will be completed in August, at a cost of 380 million dollars; and TransOlímpica, with 18 stations, which is due to begin operating in January 2016 at a cost of 1.1 billion dollars.

TransOeste was awarded a gold BRT Standard classification, in spite of problems with overcrowding and poor road surfacing along some stretches of the bus corridor.

However, Torres said, the average journey time was halved from two hours to one, and TransOeste has new units with air conditioning and onboard cameras, is accessible and offers frequent service.

TransBrasil promises to be one of the biggest rapid transit corridors in the world in terms of passenger numbers, transporting close to 820,000 passengers a day, according to the project.