Rede Integrada de Transporte (Integrated Transportation Network) (Curitiba - Brazil)
Rede Integrada de Transporte (Integrated Transportation Network) (Curitiba - Brazil)
Curitiba is a Brazilian city with approximately 1.9 million people and it is the capital of the Paraná state. The urban growth rate was strengthened by the arrival of a lot of European immigrants throughout the nineteenth century: mainly Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and Italians, which contributed to the cultural diversity that remains today. The city experienced several urban plans and laws aimed at promoting their internationally famous growth in urban innovations and environment development. Curitiba was also the first city in the world to implement a Bus Rapid Transit system (1974).
The Integrated Transportation Network (Rede Integrada de Transporte) is a public transportation system that has been specially designed to improve the system’s quality and efficiency, and to eliminate the typical delays found in traditional bus systems, when transitioning between lines. It is flexible, low cost and simple to use as a traditional bus system. The network allows a citizen to use more than one line with only one ticket, because of its integration terminals that connect different lines so that users can easily change between lines.
The Rede Integrada de Transporte has many innovative features, like dedicated lanes, busway alignment, off-board fare collection, intersection treatment and platform-level boarding. There are similar systems in Brazil and other countries, such as the TransMilenio in Porto Alegre, São Paulo and Bogotá, some of them with other innovations such as passing lanes and express service.
There are some risks associated to this system, namely failing to collect income, overloaded vehicles, personal safety issues, lengthy waits, inconvenient location of the stations, low service frequency and the fact that it might be too expensive. But the service has proven itself to be of the utmost value to the citizens of Curitiba.
Improved Intelligent Transport Systems.
URBS - Urbanização de Curitiba S.A. (planning, operation and control), Fundação Bamerindus de Assistência Social (shareholder), HSBC Seguros (Brasil) S/A (shareholder), Banestado S/A, Participações, Administração e Serviços (shareholder).
- Supervision;
- Enhance the mobility system for people with disabilities;
- Reduce air pollution;
- Extend the system to all communities;
- Customer satisfaction.
Bus Rapid Transit; Vehicle prioritization; Vehicle to Infrastructure communication (V2I); Vehicle to Vehicle communication (V2V); Fare collection; Operation management technologies; Technologies for providing information to passengers (PDAs, Smartphones, etc.); Databases and data analysis; Mobile devices.
Curitiba deployed a Bus Rapid Transit system and several intelligent traffic management solutions associated to it, as well as various technologies for providing all necessary information to passengers.
Since its implementation, the Integrated Transport Network has proved itself to be very efficient in the urban mobility management. The system provided the city of Curitiba with more efficient, safe and accessible public transports, reducing the risk of accidents and improving the urban quality of life.