EVOLUTION OF THE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM



Public transportation in Curitiba began with the introduction of
horse drawn vehicles in 1887.  Shareholders operated and
organized these vehicles under a contract with the city.  In
1906, the system had 18 km of routes, a 6000 square miles central
office with two depots and garage for repairs, 20 passenger
vehicles, 15 vehicles for cargo, and 150 horses.  In 1912,
electrically powered street cars replaced the horse drawn
vehicles.  The city gradually improved and used the street cars
until the early 1950s (Roteiro da Cidade/Documento-Do Bonde de
Mula ao Onibus Expresso 1975).

The first bus company emerged in 1928 as a public subsidiary of
the state electrical company.  In 1930, the first private bus
companies began to operate in competition with the public bus
company and with street cars.  In 1938, 11 million people rode
the lower fare street cars in contrast to 2.6 million people who
rode buses.  As the city grew, the speed and flexibility of buses
proved more advantageous than the lower cost street cars.  During
the 1940s, bus routes gradually replaced the street car routes. 
Street cars went out of service entirely in 1952.  In 1954, the
city administration set up concession contracts with 10 bus
companies operating in eight pre-established areas of the city.



Deficiencies in the Mid-Century Transportation System


As the city evolved, substantial conflict occurred between the
different transportation modes and suppliers.  There were
conflicts between owners of horse drawn vehicles and street cars
that later continued between bus and street car owners.  There
was competition for passengers between the public and private bus
fleet.  There were frequent salary disputes involving drivers,
unions, bus companies, and city governments.  Labor disputes
culminated in the great strike of 1960 when a lock-out organized
by the private companies left Curitiba without public transport
for more than a week.

The ebb and flow of these conflicts meant that public
transportation was often unreliable and inconvenient.  The
following features characterized transportation in Curitiba at
mid-century:

* The city did not have a transportation system.  Rather, it had
a collection of mismatched concessions granted to private
companies.

* There were few guidelines to encourage transportation firms to
provide effective service to the city as a whole.  The city
simply assigned each company an exclusive area of operation
within the municipality.  Transportation evolved in reaction to
the location of commercial, industrial, and residential
activities rather than in concert with them.

* Transportation companies operated without competition within
their concessions.  They ignored districts with medium and low
demographic densities and, when route schedules did exist, did
not enforce them.

* Bus routes merely linked origin and destination pairs within
the city.  The city center was typically one element in these
pairs. The confluence of routes in the central city increased
central traffic congestion.  Transfer between routes required
payment of a second fare.  The necessity of transfers increased
queuing and travel times.



Integration of Development Planning and Transportation Policy


The first attempts to integrate transportation, land use, and
urban development began in 1965 under Mayor Ivo Arzua Pereira and
the technical coordination of the Curitiba Research and Urban
Planning Institute.  The administration of Mayor Omar Sabbag
developed a preliminary mass transit plan in 1969.  The 1971 mass
transit terminals plan, developed under the first administration
of Mayor Jaime Lerner, further refined this initiative.  Mayor
Lerner also renewed the commitment to implement the 1965 master
plan.  This paper does not concentrate on the plans themselves
but on their results.

In 1971, Mayor Lerner took the first steps to implement the
city's settlement and transportation plans.  As one of the first
steps, Curitiba developed the first pedestrian network in the
country, giving priority to pedestrians in its central area.  At
the time, most Brazilian cities favored automobiles over other
forms of transportation and were busy building viaducts and
motorways within their city centers.  In contrast, Curitiba
refurbished historical buildings in the city center.  These
refurbished buildings played new roles in support of arts,
culture, and local history.  The city improved older parks and
set aside green areas and floodplains as undeveloped areas and
parks in the city's outlying districts.  A new industrial park
opened on the city's edge to attract non-hazardous industries and
manufacturing activities.

The first significant changes in the transportation system began
in 1974 with implementation of the road hierarchy and land use
control system.  Implementation began with the construction of
the first two out of five arterial structural roads.  These were
to form the core of the growth corridors.

Figure 2 shows that the structural corridors are triple road
systems with the central road having two restricted lanes
dedicated to express buses.  Two local roads flank the central
road.  Running parallel to the central roadways but offset one
block on each side are two one-way, high capacity roads for
traffic flowing in and out of the central city.

Figure 2 also shows relative settlement densities within the
growth corridor by building height.  The figure shows that
allowable densities decline as one moves away from the center of
a corridor.  These declining densities place the greatest number
of people within easy reach of transportation.  This placement
also prevents the high volume routes from disrupting the sense of
place within low density, residential neighborhoods.[note 3]

[Note 3. Curitiba's complementary pattern of roads, densities,
and human uses is similar to the organic pattern of
pre-nineteenth century growth in many cities.  It contrasts
sharply with the grid pattern used in many planned cities of
North America.  Grid cities tend to have more street area per
square foot of private property than the organic, hierarchical
forms (Moudon and Untermann 1991).]

The first two structural roadways ran north and south within the
city.  In 1974, express buses on these routes carried about
54,000 passengers/day.  By 1982, the city completed five
structural roads and complemented them with interdistrict and
feeder lines.  The integrated system carried about 400,000
passengers/day.  The system continued improvements in fare
collection and distribution, vehicles, and route extensions.  By
1982, it carried about 774,000 passengers/day.  Including the
remaining conventional routes and the integrated system, the
transit system within Curitiba today now transports more than one
million individual paying passengers a day, without considering
transfers.  This is about 75% of the city's commuters.

There are presently five structural roads in Curitiba.  The
dedicated bus lanes at the center of each structural corridor
accommodate express bus routes.  "Padron" buses with a capacity
of 110 passengers  first served these routes but later
"articulated" buses with a capacity of 170 passengers replaced
them.  The articulated buses are so long that turning on city
streets could be impractical--they would jut out into opposing
lanes of traffic as they attempted to turn.  This disadvantage in
length is overcome by constructing the buses around an
articulation point--a pivot point at mid-frame that allows them
to bend around corners.  This pivoting allows articulated buses
to use standard traffic lanes.  Many cities worldwide operate
public transport services with articulated buses.  In late 1991,
Curitiba supplemented articulated buses with "bi-articulated"
buses that have a capacity of 270 passengers.  These vehicles
were developed in Curitiba and assembled by Volvo at the Curitiba
Industrial City.  These latter buses are even longer and contain
two pivot points built into their frames.  At the present moment,
there is no information on any other city worldwide regularly
operating "bi-articulated buses" for mass transit purposes. 



Hurdles and Lessons


The Curitiba transportation system overcame a number of
significant hurdles as it developed.  In operation, there were
problems of route design, fare collection, increases in passenger
loads, and personnel problems to resolve.  In administration,
there were difficulties in revenue sharing, in developing a
system of monitoring and enforcement of standards, and in
information processing and scheduling.  Finally, the city made
significant efforts to develop improved transportation vehicles.


Stages in Route Design

Curitiba's transit system has three complementary levels of
service.  Feeder lines pass through neighborhoods and make the
system easily accessible in lower density areas.  Feeder lines
share roads with other vehicles and connect with the express
system along the structural roads.  The express system uses
dedicated bus lanes and transports large numbers of passengers in
high density corridors.  Interdistrict routes connect the axes of
the express lines without passing through the city center.

An effective integrated system is well coordinated.  It has and
meets an accurate schedule.  Transfers from feeder to express
require time to transfer passengers from one line to another. 
Without careful scheduling, the time savings of an express route
are lost in delays queuing for transfers, waiting for a
connecting bus, and boarding.  Thus, as Curitiba's route system
evolved, it required advances in fare payment, refinements in the
transfer system, personnel training, revenue sharing between
firms, and scheduling. 


Physical and Fare Integration

An integrated system of feeder and express routes might require
passengers to pay a fare with every transfer.  However,
incremental fares result in delays and inconvenience.  Even small
delays add up to significant amounts of time when aggregated
across hundreds of thousands of passengers.

To avoid passenger delays due to fare payment at each transfer,
Curitiba's system initially allowed unpaid transfers between
lines and routes.  Transfers, however, require a means of
identifying transfer passengers from those who have not yet paid.

When the single fare was first implemented, passengers received a
paper transfer token.  The token allowed them to transfer without
having to pay another fare.  Six to seven months after starting
this paper token approach, the city discovered major forgery of
the paper tokens and had to abandon the procedure.

To replace the paper tokens, the city set separate fares for
feeder and express buses.  This two-fare system did not last long
for operational and social reasons.  First, it resulted in delays
as people had to pay and be checked twice.  In addition, it
favored those who lived nearer to the structural corridors and
express routes.  In particular, it raised costs for lower income
people who used the feeder buses to come in from the periphery of
the city.  The city considered it unfair and inappropriate to
impose a higher cost on lower income people. 

A year and a half after implementing the two-fare system, the
city dropped the second fare for the feeder buses.  Passengers
rode the feeder buses for free and paid only when they entered
the express system.  This free feeder option had unforeseen
consequences.  A few months after beginning the free feeder
option, no driver wanted to work on the feeder buses.  The
vehicles became home for the homeless.  They also served as
mobile gathering places for unemployed people.  There was no
reported violence but there were many protests from citizens
regarding the conditions on the feeder buses.  The city learned
that it cannot offer any free public service and dropped the free
feeder system.

Officials than returned the system to a single fare approach. 
Rather than returning to paper tokens, the next solution was a
physical one to separate transferring passengers from those who
have not yet paid their fares.  The city built fenced runways at
transfer points between stops for the express and feeder buses. 
These runways worked for a limited period of time but, as the
passenger numbers grew, the areas became overcrowded.  The
runways also lacked aesthetic appeal.  They soon became known as
"pig stalls."  Convenience declined and complaints increased.

In 1980, the system began to significantly improve conditions at
the transfer points by constructing enclosed, transfer terminals.

Though the word "terminal" may imply a final destination, in
Curitiba terminal refers to any transfer station.  People refer
to middle terminals ("terminal do meio") and to end terminals
("terminal de ponta").  End terminals are larger in order to cope
with inter-municipal transfers.

The post-1980 terminals follow the same basic design, working
like subway stations on the surface.  Flowers, trees, shops,
glass walls, and a pleasing architecture make them as lively and
transparent as possible.  Passengers are free to walk inside the
terminals, shop, chat, make phone calls, buy newspapers, and
change from one bus route to another without having to pay
another fare.  People who live in the neighborhood pay their fare
when they enter the terminal through turnstiles.  These transfer
stations allow people to switch from one route to another with as
little delay and inconvenience as possible.


Increasing Demand

A balance between supply and demand is crucial to the profitable
operation of any transportation system.  Soon after the
introduction of the express buses in 1974, the city realized
there was something wrong.  The popularity of the express buses
resulted in overcrowding and delays.  The city planners at the
time did not anticipate that, in parallel with the evident demand
for a certain route, there was also a "repressed potential
demand" (Curitiba Research and Urban Planning Institute
1991/1992).  It mainly consisted of new passengers attracted to
the system, many of whom used private cars before the express
buses became available.  Overcrowding caused delays in boarding
at stops and terminals.  To compensate for the delays, drivers
would exceed the maximum speed allowed and occasionally cause
accidents.   As a stopgap measure, the city strictly controlled
speed limits and required buses to operate with their lights on
in order to improve their visibility to other drivers and
pedestrians.  Officials gradually solved the problem of
increasing demand with improvements in bus design, high service
boarding tubes, and other measures explained below.


Method of Paying Fares

>From 1974 to 1980, passengers paid their bus fares in cash as
they entered the system. To reduce the time needed for fare
payment on buses, the city introduced automatic ticketing in
1980.  Passengers now pay either with money or a metal token. 
The token is available for sale in shops, newsstands, and bus
terminals.  In 1990, there were 37 million tokens in circulation.

The result is a small improvement that results in significant
time savings across the system as a whole.  Buses circulate more
rapidly to provide more frequent service with the same number of
vehicles.


Personnel

The development of Curitiba's integrated system was the first
time in Brazil that a local government had set operational
standards and timetables for a metropolitan bus system.  The city
accomplished resulting improvements without specialized
transportation planners or transport engineers to outline the
final system.  Planners, architects, and engineers from Curitiba
Research and Planning Institute (IPPUC) and Urbanizacao de
Curitiba (URBS) knew the city well and developed their own
solutions.  The experience gained in designing and implementing
these solutions gradually grew into a systematic and practical
body of knowledge.  This knowledge places special emphasis on
personnel training and flexibility.  It recognizes that personnel
and technology need to work together if the overall system is to
function smoothly.

Bus drivers are a key part of the system and received special
training from the outset of the integrated system.  When the
system opened, it used buses designed from the bottom up as
buses.  This new design placed the engine in the rear of the
vehicle to reduce the weight and noise.  Until this time, all
Brazilian cities had used buses built on truck chassis.  These
chassis placed the engine at the front of the vehicle and drivers
changed gears by listening to the engine.  Hence, a first task
was to train drivers to shift gears without the assistance of
noise from the engine.  Drivers also had to learn how to drive on
dedicated bus lanes and to learn procedures for operating in
crowded terminals.  When the city introduced high service
boarding tubes, express drivers had to learn to approach and park
buses in proper relationship to the boarding entrances.


Revenue Payment System for Private Operators

During the last 40 years, transportation costs have been paid
through several different revenue collection systems.  From the
1950s to the 1970s, the city granted bus companies concessions to
eight non-overlapping areas.  Within these areas they charged a
fare previously negotiated with the city administration.  Their
revenue corresponded to the number of paid passengers that they
transported within those areas. 

The interdistrict routes begun in 1979 cut across the territorial
concessions to connect the five express routes.  These
interdistrict routes weakened the space monopolies of the
concessions.  Bus operating firms put up substantial resistance
to the interdistrict routes, but the city remained committed to
them.  These lines connected routes operated by different
companies.  Since a single fare covered the entire integrated
system, passengers would commonly pay to enter a route operated
by one company and then transfer to another line run by another
company.  To maintain the solvency of the cooperating companies,
some form of revenue sharing was necessary.  Without revenue
sharing, a company would incur an unpaid cost in proportion to
the number of transfers accepted from other companies.

To solve the revenue sharing problem, the city developed a
revenue compensation mechanism based on operating and capital
costs.  Surveys helped estimate operating costs and the number of
passengers transported by each company.  This gave the city
detailed data about the revenue and costs of each company.  Over
several years, the city tried various formulas for distributing
revenues across firms.

In 1987, the city settled on a revenue sharing formula based on
the number of kilometers traveled by vehicle type for a given
company.  Each company has a given number of route kilometers and
a given timetable.  It obtains maximum revenues by meeting its
scheduled route.  The formula makes no adjustment in revenue for
the number of passengers transported by a company.  Each company
competes only with the schedule, subject to specified quality
standards.

All fares go into a common bank account that is audited and open
to public scrutiny.  The city also monitors the performance of
individuals companies.  The monitoring system is funded by the
collected revenues.  There are routine checks on the number of
kilometers covered by each company.


Monitoring System and Enforcement

The relationship between the city and entrepreneurs has traversed
a long, occasionally tortuous, path.  The transition from small
independent lines to a large integrated system run in partnership
with private companies required practicable mechanisms to monitor
the performance of individual companies and ensure the operation
of the overall system.   The  monitoring and enforcement system
includes the following elements: 

* Buses use tachographs that record speed and travel time,
including maximum speeds and stops.

* Buses have turnstiles, also located in boarding tubes, that
record the number of paying passengers.  People over 65, school
children in uniform, police officers, fire fighters, and mail
carriers in uniform ride free.

* Garage surveys systematically determine the number of buses in
circulation.

* Random surveys also determine the total number of passengers
for certain trips on specific routes.

* Supervisors trained and employed by Urbanizacao de Curitiba
work in all bus terminals. 

* Occasional terminal surveys determine the number of people
using the transfer terminals.


Information System

Curitiba began to computerize routing and schedules soon after it
implemented express routes in 1974.  Before this a time-consuming
manual process controlled routing and scheduling.  After two
years of work, Urbanizacao de Curitiba developed special custom
software for bus timetables.  This program, later named NETBUS,
is still in use, and the city continues to refine it.  It has
also been successfully transferred from Curitiba to other
Brazilian capitals, such as Vitoria (state of Espirito Santo) and
Aracaju (state of Alagoas).  The Curitiba Industrial City also
houses the Curitiba Software Pole, which commercializes NETBUS
and various other software products.


Vehicle Design

When Curitiba began to develop its integrated system, buses in
Brazil had truck chassis.  Assembly companies would install a
standard bus body over a truck chassis and call it a bus.  These
buses had small doors, steep and narrow stairways, vertical
exhaust pipes, and were bumpy, noisy, and uncomfortable.

The Brazilian subsidiary at Cummins, in northeast Brazil
manufactured the first Brazilian bus chassis.  When Cummins
stopped manufacturing vehicles, Curitiba had to buy buses from
Mercedes Benz, which refused to manufacture the bus chassis. 
This forced the city to operate buses with truck chassis until
Volvo installed a bus assembly plant in the Curitiba Industrial
City.

A second problem was the bus body design.  Afraid of fare
evasion, bus companies wanted doors as small as possible.  They
also insisted on buses with only two doors.  People would board
the bus through the rear door, pay at the turnstile located
toward the back of the bus, and exit through the front door at
their desired stop.  At peak times, those riding for a short
distance found it difficult to reach the exit door on time.  This
internal bus layout was not convenient for high capacity
vehicles.

To improve the two-door bus, Curitiba worked with bus
manufacturers in Brazil to assemble a three-door bus: two doors
for exiting and a front door for boarding.  This vehicle
permitted a better internal distribution of passengers during
peak times.  At first, some manufacturers argued that a bus with
three doors was not structurally sound.  Today, buses have
advanced beyond three doors.  All major assembly groups now
operating in Brazil manufacture urban buses with turbo engines,
lower floor levels, wider doors, and a convenient design for mass
transit.  As a ready buyer of improved vehicles, Curitiba has
helped develop the market and the standards for Brazilian mass
transit buses.

Curitiba's most significant innovation is the system of direct
route buses that operate in parallel with the dedicated bus lanes
of the structural corridors.  These direct routes make use of
high service boarding tubes and high capacity buses.  The direct
route system combines vehicles, routes, and high service boarding
tubes to reduce travel times and increase convenience, comfort,
and passenger capacity.  The main features of the system are:

* The vehicle uses a conventional bus modified so that the doors
open directly onto a patented boarding tube station.  The floor
from bus to boarding tube is level.  Without stairs to climb or
having to step onto uneven pavement, passengers embark and
disembark quickly.

* At each direct route stop, passengers enter the route system
via a stationary aluminum and glass boarding tube that lies
parallel to the roadway.  Embarking passengers enter one end and
disembarking passengers exit the other after a bus has stopped. 
Embarking passengers pass a turnstile and pay their fare to a
conductor in charge of the boarding tube.  The entry point
contains a full color map of direct route system painted on the
exterior glass.   Passengers can verify that they are at the
correct embarking point before they pay a fare and enter the
tube.

* Passengers wait for the next bus on an elevated platform at the
same floor level as the bus.  Passengers wait in comfort and
security and board swiftly when the bus arrives.

* When a direct route bus aligns itself with the boarding tube,
the bus driver opens the doors of bus and tube using a remote
control system.  Disembarking passengers exit one set of doors
and embarking passengers enter immediately afterwards, as if in a
subway system. Entry and exit is rapid.  With the passengers
secure, the doors close and the driver pulls away into the
dedicated bus lane.  Swift boarding times reduce route times and
increase the peak capacity of the system.

* The direct system makes route information easily available to
potential and actual passengers.  In addition to the color-coded
map painted on the boarding tube near the entry door, both buses
and boarding tubes conveniently display stylized route maps. 
Moreover, the name of each bus stop is printed on both the color
coded and stylized maps.  The exterior of the boarding tubes
display bus stop names in bold letters so that bus passengers can
easily identify their location on a route.

* The tubes' level access easily accommodates disabled
passengers, strollers, and passengers with bags and parcels.  In
addition, a small lift beside the entrance of the tube, makes
access for these passengers almost immediate.


Bi-articulated 270-passenger buses that also use the boarding
tubes have further extended the capacity of the system.  Curitiba
has 33 bi-articulated buses operated primarily in the high
demand, lower income district on the southeast periphery of the
city.

The next innovation may be to incorporate an electric tramway
into the system.  To increase capacity, the city has prepared a
plan for an electric tramway that will circulate in the central
lanes of the structural corridors.  The road network and land use
legislation would remain basically the same.  The mode would
change from bus to tramway with a capacity for 400 passengers,
with only minor modification of existing roadways.