BUS RAPID TRANSIT IN BRAZIL: AIR QUALITY AND GHG BENEFITS

Abstract:

By the end of the 1970’s, Brazil was leading the implementation of high-flow bus priority schemes. Busways were introduced in cities like São Paulo, Curitiba, Porto Alegre, Belo Horizonte and Goiânia and some of them were classified by the World Bank as the most imaginative and radical bus priority measures carried out anywhere in the world. While São Paulo and Porto Alegre invested in high-flow median lane busways, Curitiba implemented what is now known as Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). It is now estimated that Brazilian cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants present a potential for implementing 2,500 km of bus corridors. Also, most of the already existing busways in Brazil need renovation and BRT systems offer the opportunity of increasing transit productivity while overcoming the problems generated by the irrationality of multiple superimposed radial routes converging to terminals located at the city centres. But will Brazilian cities follow the lead of Curitiba that uses BRT as the backbone for Transit Oriented Development (TOD) or will they mirror Porto Alegre that converted nice boulevards and plazas of its city center into ugly bus terminals? We compare Curitiba and Porto Alegre and then present estimates of CO2 emissions along corridors and the results of a pilot study where PM2.5 levels were assessed at stations and inside buses.