Last year, APTA and its counterpart
association in Brazil, the Association Nacional Transport Public, signed a Cooperation
Agreement to conduct mutually beneficial information exchanges and to keep each other
updated in transit developments in their respective countries. The first evidence of this
desire to learn from each other was an exchange of "emissaries." In 1999, John
Inglish, general manager of the Utah Transit Authority, officially represented APTA at the
ANTP Annual Conference in Brazil. In turn, a Brazilian delegation visited the 1999 APTA
Annual Meeting and EXPO in Orlando, Fla.
This article by Prof. Eduardo Vasconcellos, associate
director of the ANTP, reports on some of the significant and recent public transit
developments occurring in South America's largest and most populous country. It was edited
by Joel Volinski of the Center for Urban Transportation Research, University of South
Florida, Tampa, Fla.
Approximately 100,000 buses are in operation in Brazil,
providing 60 million passenger trips per day. While much of the character of Brazil's bus
service is similar to that of many urban areas in the United States, Brazil has been a
leader in the development of high-performance bus services. In particular, the city of
Curitiba has received international recognition for its exclusive bus corridors, and has
helped spur the Federal Transit Administration's recent interest in Bus Rapid Transit
applications in the United States.
Curitiba's bus network now consists of more than 60
kilometers of exclusive bus lanes, 294 km of feeder bus lines, and 167 km of district bus
lines. The Curitiba bus system operates with 1,300 buses and serves almost one million
passengers a day.
In 1991, special bus lines were created in Curitiba.
Passengers board at fewer stops, with high-platform, tubelike stations, and pay prior to
boarding. All these features (exclusive right-of-way, prepayment, high platforms, and
fewer stops) replicate the advantages offered by heavy rail systems and contribute to much
faster travel in these BRT corridors.
Similar exclusive bus corridors totaling 121 km are found
in other Brazilian cities as well, including Belo Horizonte, Campinas, Goiania, Porto
Alegre, Recife, Sao Paulo, and Juiz De Fora.
It is not generally known that more buses are produced in
Brazil than in any other country in the world. Over the years, the Brazilian bus industry
has been a leader in offering new vehicles with high capacity and comfort.
The "Padron" bus, introduced in the 1970s, was
equipped with three wide doors and a capacity of 105 passengers. The Padron was later
followed by articulated and bi-articulated buses with capacities of up to 170 and 220
passengers respectively. These high-capacity buses are used on trunk lines such as the BRT
corridors to provide increased passenger capacity and to take advantage of the higher
travel speeds in these corridors.
Another technology that will be tested is a
bi-articulated, guided, elevated trolleybus. Part of the first 8.5-km line featuring this
equipment is expected to open for experimental operation in Sao Paulo in August of 2000.
Commercial operation is expected to begin in late December with 15 vehicles, with a
maximum estimated capacity of 30,000 passengers per hour, per direction.
A leading environmental transport problem in Brazil has
been the high percentage of sulfur in the country's diesel fuel. The percentage of sulfur
has been reduced from 0.7 percent to 0.2 percent in the Sao Paulo metropolitan region, and
to 0.3 percent in other parts of the country.
Although electric trolleybuses play a minor role in
Brazilian public transport (290,000 passengers a day in a total of five cities), two new
trolleybus projects are underway. Both of these projects are occurring in Sao Paulo, a
metropolitan region of 17 million people. A new concession opportunity will require
private operators to replace 133 diesel buses with trolleybuses in the 24-km ABD
metropolitan corridor. Trolley service in downtown Sao Paulo, where 400 trolleybuses
operate, has been reorganized, including the construction of three new trolley lines to
replace diesel bus lines.
A group of public and private agencies is conducting a
major study on the effects of adding alcohol to diesel, funded by the sugar cane producers
association in Sao Paulo. The study hopes to demonstrate lower particulate emissions by
buses, similar to experiences in Australia and Sweden that achieved emission reductions of
50 percent with a 15 percent addition of alcohol. Tests in Brazil are using a lower
percentage addition of alcohol, due to characteristics of Brazilian fuel and engines.
Brazilian transit agencies have experimented with
compressed natural gas since 1984. In 1991, Sao Paulo passed a law requiring all its
diesel buses to be replaced by natural gas buses within 10 years. However, the process of
converting to natural gas has taken much longer than expected; approximately 600 out of
10,000 buses have been converted to date. Natural gas reserves are plentiful in Brazil,
and the country expects these buses to decrease hydrocarbon emissions by 50 percent and
smog and particulates by 100 percent.
In spite of its advantages, CNG still presents challenges
to Brazilian transit agencies, which have reported a 5 to 10 percent loss of power and a
higher cost for CNG buses than for their diesel counterparts. Fueling a CNG bus takes
approximately 15 minutes, in addition to the 20-minute additional travel time to reach the
limited fueling stations.
Finally, Sao Paulo was recently selected by the United
Nations to test a new hydrogen-powered bus, along with the United States and Canada. Tests
will use eight vehicles that will run in the ABD metropolitan bus corridor, beginning with
three vehicles in 2001. The experiment will be coordinated by the Metropolitan Urban
Transportation Agency.
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