Curitiba 
Curitiba has accomplished a lot on a limited budget. But what lessons from
the Curitiba model are applicable to a city like Los Angeles? There are
important details not covered in most articles.
Curitiba is a compact city. Its five main radial bus lines are only about six miles
long, with an average bi-articulated bus speed of just 12-13 mph
(20 km/hr), too slow for longer trips.
The average
speed of the express buses is 32 km/h, and for the
bi-articulated buses which stop every 500 metres, 20 km/h [12.4 mph]. (Volvo Buses – Curitiba;
this quote is no longer on Volvo's website)
Prepayment of fares and level boarding, systems typically found in rail systems,
create a very efficient boarding and deboarding process. A bi-articulated
bus (a 5-door, 82-foot bus built by Volvo and currently used only in
Curitiba) with a load of 270 people can board or deboard in about 20
seconds. The average speed of buses using the busway is
13 miles per hour – twice the estimated speed for operating in
the same corridors in mixed traffic.
There are five busways, each between 5
and 7.5 miles long, radiating from the city center. The most
recent busway was completed in 1994 at a cost of $1.5 million per kilometer.
There are plans to add circumferential busways to link key suburban
areas.
The busway uses a signal priority system. However, because the frequency of buses
operating on the busway can reach one bus per minute during peak hours
in the peak direction, there
is a limit on the amount of priority that can be given to the bus without
creating unacceptable delays for cross traffic. As a result,
buses operating on the busways were observed stopping at several of
the signalized cross streets.
The city is nearing the capacity limits of a busway. The peak-hour frequency
of buses and the size of buses cannot be increased within the constraints
of a busway operating at grade and intersecting city streets. The next
step in the continuing evolution and improvement of the transit system
is to create a grade-separated transitway (probably rail) in place of
the busiest busways. Plans are to have the first grade-separated corridor
in place in about 6 or 8 years. (International Transit Studies Program,
Report on the Spring 1998 Mission)
A Curitiba bi-articulated bus (twice the length of
a standard 40-foot bus) seats only 57 – its “270 passengers” are
mostly standing! This would hardly appeal to American riders, not
to mention violating the Los Angeles MTA’s consent decree with the Bus
Riders Union to limit standees. By comparison, a new low-floor 40-foot
bus seats about 38 people, 1/6 of a 3-car light rail train.
First, it is somewhat questionable if large numbers
of Southern California riders will accept the degree of overcrowding
that we observed in Curitiba for long trips. More important, however,
the Consent Decree in Labor/Community Strategy Center v. MTA
requires MTA to operate buses with a peak load factor (the ratio of
total passengers at the peak load point of each line to the number of
seats on the bus) of no more than 1.2:1 by 2002. The
Curitiba loads of 270 were achieved on buses with 57 seats, a
load factor of 4.74. (Thomas A. Rubin, “The Future for Transit
in the San Fernando Valley” page 23)
As for creating dedicated bus lanes along heavily
traveled Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, the idea of taking two existing
traffic lanes plus its landscaped median for buses has so far received
vocal opposition and little public support.
Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer wrote about Curitiba buses:
Impressionable as I am, I bought into the new buses
after watching a display put on by the by the governor of Curitiba's
province. It all seems so cozily efficient, what with robot-like passengers
being disgorged out of all the doors simultaneously, just like Disneyland.
But then Robson Ciro Chavez, a Brazilian living in the U.S., e-mailed me to set
the record straight on mass transit in his hometown. I trust his summary
that the system there, which we may copy, is one “where people
wait, on rainy days, outside those tubes, and like cattle, [they] travel
in crazy drivers' hands through the city.”
Also, other Brazilians from the Curitiba area tell
me the people back home would much rather have a subway system or light
rail, which would be easier on the passengers and the environment. (Our Times, 3/19/00)
It appears Curitiba will be getting a rail system – the City of Curitiba’s web site
showed a monorail on a page (in Portuguese) of plans for a “Metro Elevado.”
While Curitiba has its fans, light rail’s speed, comfort, and capacity have
made it a popular success in the United States. Phoenix just voted
to join the western cities of Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Sacramento,
San Diego, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Denver, Dallas, Houston, St. Louis,
and Minneapolis, that all have or are building light rail.
Curitiba and busway links
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