Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Rio de Janeiro is the second-largest metropolitan area in Brazil, with roughly 11 million people in more than 30 municipalities. economic and population growth over the past two decades have resulted in congestion amid an increase in personal vehicles and motorcycles. Until a few years back, Rio had the third-worst congestion among cities worldwide, as residents wasted, on average, 100 hours per year in traffic jams (Ramalho 2015). From 2001 to 2011, personal vehicles increased 62 percent, while the motorcycle fleet tripled (Mobilize n.d.). Together, motorcycles and cars represented more than 88 percent of the total number of vehicles in Rio.

Scheduled to host the 2014 Soccer World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, Rio adopted a plan to improve public transportation options in the city, which included expansion of the metro system and implementation of BRT corridors. The local government launched TransOeste in 2012, the first of three BRT corridors to solve the city’s mobility issues and congestion. TransOeste led to the development of 62 stations and 61.5 kilometers of bus routes. The project had four principal aims:

• Alleviate congestion and improve the supply of public transportation • Reduce travel times and pollution • Connect the West Zone, which lacked public transportation options, with the rest of the city • Carry 220,000 passengers per day.

TransOeste, together with the rest of Rio’s integrated transportation system, has improved public transportation in the city despite facing many challenges. TransOeste was inaugurated in 2016 during the Olympic Games for game attendees only. After the games, it became available to the general public. TransOeste reduced travel times by 65 percent, from 120 minutes to 43 minutes, and surpassed its ridership objectives, serving 216,000 passengers each day (BRT Consortium n.d.). The total cost of TransOeste was US$470 million

TABLE A.14 Lessons learned from the TransOeste bus rapid transit project in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

BEST PRACTICES

• TransOeste is part of an integrated transportation system with the metro and train systems. [operation risk] • Continued political support and championing of the project were key to the project’s success. [political and social risk] [planning risk] • Attendees at the 2016 Olympic Games followed the authorities’ advice and used the public transportation system—especially bus rapid transit—without restrictions, which alleviated the city’s traffic during the games. [operation risk] [political risk] • All stations are accessible to the disabled. [political and social risk]

AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT

• Technical designs that reduce whole-of-life costing are key to achieve value for money and service quality in the project. Inadequate design led to asphalt being used instead of concrete. Asphalt has not been able to withstand the weight of crowded buses and has caused potholes, broken vehicles, and schedule delays. [operation risk] [planning risk] [natural and environmental risk] • Maintaining the project infrastructure is key to achieving the project’s service quality goals. In this case, the government failed to maintain the infrastructure. [maintenance risk] [operation risk] [political risk] • Implementing measures that increase transparency and reduce political influence are key to achieving the project’s results and avoiding corruption. Political risk is often present in low- and middle-income countries, especially in large, sophisticated projects with a lot of visibility. In this case, TransOeste was involved in corruption scandals that affected the government’s credibility. [operation risk] [political risk] • Changes to the project design and structure can result in higher costs. In this case, the contract got renegotiated, which resulted in higher-than-expected costs. [operation risk] [planning risk] • Demand has risen and saturated the system. [design risk] • A lack of safe crossing points has caused dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries along the TransOeste routes (Kassens-Noor et al. 2016). [planning risk] [design risk] [operation risk] [political risk]

(Rio Prefeitura 2013). The city government got a loan from the Brazilian Development Bank to cover this project and others before the Olympic Games (BnDeS 2014). Table A.14 presents the lessons learned from the project.

MEDELLÍN (METROPOLITAN AREA OF ABURRA VALLEY, COLOMBIA)

Medellín’s experience poses a unique opportunity to compare different delivery models in implementing urban bus projects in a conventional bus system. The experience of setting up a special-purpose vehicle for providing bus services in an area of the city proved inferior to an alternative arrangement using business collaboration agreements.

Area Metropolitana del valle de Aburra (AMvA) is an example of transportation integration in the region. Metro de Medellín SA is a public operator in charge of operating the metro, the BRT system (Metroplús), the famous cable cars (Metrocable), and the Ayacucho tram. In parallel, conventional buses serve the majority of transportation demand (53 percent) in the area. AMvA is the transportation authority that plans transportation in the metropolitan area, manages permits, and approves routes and levels of service for all modes in the integrated system.

In 2011 AMvA began efforts to integrate the conventional bus system with the publicly operated modes. The efforts started by dividing the city into nine areas—called cuencas—for the purposes of planning and operation. The authorities structured a bidding process for the operation of cuencas 3 and 6, which currently handle 160,000 trips per day. One of the local operators reorganized itself and won the bid for operating one of the cuencas; the other cuenca is operated by a joint venture of a local operator and a national operator. The metro provided fare collection systems in the vehicles, the fleet incorporated the system’s corporate image, and the authorities managed the planning of operations and also took over their control. The operators took out 600 vehicles and bought 377 compressed natural gas buses. Operations had commenced by the end of 2013. early results were mixed. There were problems in finding depots and workshops and also in distributing fare collection cards in low-demand areas. The buses were not fit for operation in the hilly areas of the city. Despite the high level of rationalization (almost 40 percent) and the higher efficiency of the newer vehicles, the gap between user fares and technical tariffs offered by the awardees resulted in the need for subsidies, which amounted to about US$20 million a year, or about US$0.40 per trip.

After this experience, AMvA devised a new strategy that achieved better results without a bidding process and maintained permits and the current legal framework. Before a bidding process, it offered permit holders in a given cuenca a chance to reorganize themselves to mimic the expected outcomes of a bidding process without the reorganization. They had to present a joint operational plan that included joint fare collection (and also devise the internal remuneration processes for sharing the income), the use of corporate image elements, and the sharing of vehicle location data with AMvA. Their plan had to comply with the levels of service and conditions set by AMvA. In turn, AMvA would spend US$500,000 (plus around US$350,000 in annual operating costs) to develop a specific platform to control the fleet and monitor compliance with requirements.