Brazil: Successful Management of Alternative Transportation

The growth of the large cities in Brazil, like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, led to an increase in the demand for more efficient public transportation services  with the capacity to provide better mobility alternatives for the citizens.

In the 90's, the regulated public transportation system experienced the invasion of individual offers of transportation in small vehicles, which operated illegally in the cities.

The Observatorio de Movilidad Urbana para América Latina (Urban Mobility Observatory for Latin America) report revealed that the regular public transportation service in Brazil did not adequately serve the interests of the users. The diversification of the service by means of private alternatives led to disputes regarding the management of transportation. This situation opened the possibility of an alternative to overcome the deficiencies.

The study Operaciones de vans y microbuses en el municipio de Rio de Janeiro  (Operations of Vans and Minibuses in the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro) (Nassi and others, 2003) analyzed the volume of offers of alternative transportation in Rio de Janeiro, and the characteristics of the practice, advantages and disadvantages of regulated and deregulated systems, concluding that the measures to control the growth of the private offer did not lead to an increase in productivity, but, on the contrary, they placed the sustainability of the system at risk.

For this reason, inclusion methods for alternative services within the regular system were suggested, with a supplementary character, proposing the operation of both services, regular and alternative, in a coordinated manner.