Rua Padre Anchieta, as one of the main thoroughfares in Curitiba, Brazil, is a logical focal point for the city’s bus network. But whereas bus stops in many other cities consist of little more than a sign and perhaps a bench, the ones on Rua Padre Anchieta are a bit different. In the middle of the street sit two tube-shaped stations, raised from ground level and protected from the elements, that open on to two-way express lanes. These lanes are reserved for long orange buses, which zip past slower car traffic and quickly shuttle passengers on and off at the stations on outward-folding ramps. Stations like this now exist throughout the city and metropolitan area.
Though difficult to imagine, these distinctive stations that are now the symbol of the city were originally a cost-cutting measure. Implemented as a practical way for the city to create faster mass transit without breaking the bank, they would go on to revolutionise transport, not just in Curitiba but in cities around the world.
For much of its existence, Curitiba was a sleepy town eclipsed by São Paulo, its much larger neighbour to the north-east. But by 1960, the city’s population was beginning to grow significantly and within 20 years it had surged from 120,000 people to 361,000. Planners began wondering how to cope with this growth, and initially, there were plans to make the city more like Brasilia, the nation’s newly built capital. Avenues were to be widened and the city centre was to be adapted so that cars could become the primary mode of transport.
However, these plans would be cut short when Curitiban architect Jaime Lerner, then in his early thirties, took office as mayor in 1971. Under the dictatorship ruling Brazil in the late 1960s, the local governor selected Lerner as mayor, confident that the young architect wouldn’t challenge his political order.
Lerner immediately began to shake things up. His vision for Curitiba turned the conventional urban planning at play in Brasilia on its head. Instead of widening avenues, he created a pedestrian mall in the city centre. And rather than turning frequently flooding arroyos into concrete drainage canals, he dammed the small streams to create parks, which would close during floods. But his most memorable contribution came in his ideas for the city’s bus network.
Realising the importance of mass transit, planners called for the creation of subway lines, as well as widened streets for cars – but construction would be costly and could take decades to complete.
Instead, Lerner saw an opportunity in the one form of transport that many considered a lost cause: the bus. His idea was to devise a system that gave buses as many of the functional advantages of urban train systems as possible. He proposed to integrate dedicated bus lanes along the city’s main arteries, with stations placed on medians along the routes. This would allow buses to run at speeds comparable to light rail, while dramatically reducing the cost.
A savvy deal-maker, Lerner made a bargain with private bus operators to pay for the creation of the new infrastructure, while they would provide the vehicles in exchange. With this trade-off in place, the first rapid bus lanes of Curitiba ended up costing 50 times less than rail.
Though the system wasn’t an instant success after the opening of the first line in 1974, it gradually worked its way into the livelihoods of residents. In 1979, Lerner created the Rede Integrada de Transporte (Integrated Transport Network) to better manage the system and, as new routes were added, it began to show its full potential. By 1993, it was carrying 1.5 million passengers a day.
But high ridership created a problem. Buses in the system still used conventional boarding systems, where passengers entered through the front of the bus and paid fares on board. Lerner, who was back in office for his third term as mayor, came up with an elegant solution.
He called for a revamped station design that enabled faster boarding through multiple doors, and fares would be exchanged before entering the station – similar to subway or light-rail systems. Offboard payment would also allow for the creation of transfer stations, meaning one fare would cover the entire system. To top it off, Lerner gave the stations a distinctive look by placing them in futuristic glass tubes. These new “tube stations” debuted in October 1991 as part of the first Ligeirinho express line. Today there are 357 tube stations throughout the city.
With this important addition, the city’s system became the world’s first bus rapid transit (BRT) network. “Curitiba was the first to include the essential elements necessary for a BRT system to function effectively,” says Andrés Fingeret, director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy in Buenos Aires.
The success of Curitiba’s BRT, which had mostly gone unnoticed elsewhere, began to attract attention from other cities in Latin America. BRT would be soon be given the chance to prove itself on a much larger scale in Bogotá, Colombia, a city of 8 million people. There, mayor Enrique Peñalosa seized on the concept as a way to solve the crippling traffic problems of his city. After taking office in 1998 he borrowed and added to many of the system’s concepts to build a viable BRT network, the Transmilenio. The stations, which feature many of the key functional elements of Curitiba’s, contributed to its success.
From there, BRT’s success continued to grow, spreading as far as the United States, South Africa and China. However, Latin America continues to have a special relationship with BRT, where the systems carry more people than in any other region in the world. “Due to the similar language and cultural context, it was easier for the success of BRT in Curitiba to be replicated elsewhere in Latin America,” says Fingeret.
But as BRT took off internationally, it began to face problems back in Curitiba. Though ridership remained among the highest in the world for BRT, a 2012 article in CityLab reported that it was declining with respect to previous years, while car usage climbed. Curitiba newspaper Gazeta do Povo has noted that the stations did a poor job protecting passengers from extreme temperatures, and in some cases were inefficient at keeping out rainwater.
In addition, Curitiba’s population has now swelled to over 1.8 million people – more than four times what it was when the BRT system first opened. Mobility remains an issue in the city and, despite BRT’s success, the city has made initial plans for the creation of a subway system – a form of transport Lerner called “a thing of the past” and did his best to avoid.
One other potential solution now being considered in Curitiba is the bicycle. Unlike other cities known for sustainability, Curitiba is only recently beginning to take cycling seriously. After two decades of hardly any new plans for cycling, a 2012 bicycle masterplan called for the creation of 400km of new lanes.
Fortunately, the bus system may be an asset toward these efforts. “The BRT system and cycling can and should work together to provide better mobility options for the city,” says Alexandre Costa Nascimento, editor of the Curitiba cycling blog Ir e Vir de Bike. Though critical of the implementation of the city’s current bike masterplan, he notes: “Planners should consider integration programmes such as bike racks, bike parking and fare incentives.”
Despite these lingering issues, BRT in Curitiba has become a cultural touchstone, the city’s answer to the freewheeling carnival spirit of Rio and the fast-paced, business-dominated lifestyle in São Paulo. The city’s ministry of culture has set up the Tuboteca, a book exchange programme, in the city’s bus stations. And, as if to remove any doubt as to their status as this city’s symbol, Curitiba’s airport gift shop is built in the shape of a life-size BRT station.
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