São Paulo’s railway network should double in five years

São Paulo will have over the next five years the largest expansion in the history of its metro-railway network. The railway network, which has today about 205 miles of tracks, will have just over 280 miles, with seven works in progress and one about to start. Most of this increase will occur for Metrô and monorails, whose extension should go from the current 43.5 miles to just over 93 miles. For the first time passengers transiting in São Paulo will have the option of going by rail to the two major airports in the city of São Paulo, Congonhas and Guarulhos.

These expansion works will add more 48.6 miles to the metro-railway network, offering new connections and routes to the population. To meet the growing demand, investments for the period 2012-2015 reach USD 18.6 billion. With such expansion, the rails should increase the number of passengers carried to about 12 to 13 million people a day on average by 2020. In 2013, the figure was just over 7.6 million passengers. 18 years ago, a little more than 2.5 million people were transported each day by the state’s metro-railway network. São Paulo’s secretary of metropolitan transport, Jurandir Fernandes, says that the railway network growth has been higher than the growth of the road system. And not only railways will be expanded. The road transport will see a further development of bus lanes.

In late December, the city signed a contract with the Ministry of Cities that provides for the investment of USD 828.8 million in almost 62 miles of bus lanes to be implemented in the municipality. One of the works that is getting off the ground is corridor Inajar de Souza, with 9 miles linking major roads of the northern area with the center. Bi-articulated buses will travel in this section in exclusive lanes. With an estimated cost of USD 70 million, it should be in operation in June next year. About 10% of the work has been completed. In addition to this project, the corridor Capão Redondo-Campo Limpo-Vila Sônia and M’Boi Mirim- Santo Amaro will also be financed, as well as three sections of Radial Leste, a major route linking east and center. It is expected that the works start after the end of the rainy season. These new corridors account for about two thirds of the 93 miles of corridors envisaged in the City’s Program of Goals 2013-2106. According to the secretary of transportation, São Paulo’s metro-railway system broke the record of passengers in 2013 with about two billion users.

This represents over 75% of all people transported by trains and subways throughout Brazil. The increase over 2012 was 3.5%. The state government is preparing to make in less than ten years the same mileage of underground and overhead rail as the mileage of railways built in nearly forty years. A network with this size starts to have greater balance and stability, so people can leave the car at home, says Jurandir Fernandes. Besides the expansion of the network in the last ten years, for example with the opening of line 4, which connects west and center, the upward mobility was added to investments for modernizing CPTM network, which improved services and increased the number of users of the system. In 2001, the interval between trains was between 12 to 18 minutes.

Today this interval is between four and seven minutes. It is expected that by next year this time will fall for three minutes on most CPTM lines. We have made many investments in substations and automatic power switches, which allows a greater robustness and faster detection and troubleshooting. Currently there are seven works in progress, some of which will already be delivered in 2014. Line 8 of CPTM will have about 4 miles of trails and is expected to be delivered in March this year. Line 9 will have additional 2.8 miles, which should be delivered in December. On the metro, three stations will be delivered in line 4 this year (Fradique Coutinho, Oscar Freire and Mackenzie). This should have an impact on those who already use the metro, but have to walk to move to existing stations, he says.

By 2016, two other stations (Morumbi and Vila Sônia) will be opened to the public, which should make this line carry 940 thousand passengers per day, more than the current 700 thousand. We have seven works in progress, three for CPTM and four for the metro. Another work is about to be started, the line 6, which was granted recently under a Public-Private Partnership, he says. These works have an extension of about 43.5 miles, almost the same size of the current network.

One of this works is line 13 of CPTM, which will link the east side of São Paulo and Guarulhos airport, thus creating the first alternative option to get to the airport terminal.