Oferta e demanda de transportes integrados: um estudo de caso em Belo Horizonte

Abstract

The means of transport are increasingly more time, energy, space, and financial resources consuming. In Brazil, mobility is essentially dependent on the road system, where the bus travels have been substantially affected by the increased use of individual cars. This has led to a number of shortfalls, including traffic jams, inefficiency, high costs and migration from public to private transportation systems, especially in cases of unsatisfactory public transportation. The vicious cycle leads to further slowness, accidents, pollution and urban inequalities. The quality of the public transportation service and the choice of demandspecific technological and operational solutions are important factors in shaping the development of large urban cities, with direct impact on quality of life. The technology adopted for public transportation is a particularly important variable, given the variety of technological and operational solutions available to meet the same demand. This study addresses the impact of choices of high-capacity transport modes on the urban development of major cities, which is expected point to aspects which should be considered for planning transport networks. A major issue is the structural character of BRT systems and whether they serve only to an operational demand for better functioning of the bus system. If this is true, BRT systems, therefore, imply significant investments that are able to produce only shortterm benefit. More specifically, this thesis aims to analyze the estimates for transportation supply and demand considered in the Bus Rapid System of Belo Horizonte. The results point to difficulties in promoting prioritized mobility through the BRT systems, since the necessary bus segregation encounters obstacles at the solution level, largely because of the several instances of interference with the general traffic and pedestrian access which result from the previous urban design. In addition, the thesis examines the strategic importance of planning transportation at the metropolitan level, at which policy makers and engineers can study the potential of implementing larger capacity technologies, such as a subway network. Regardless the existing configuration of bus systems as the only structuring solution, which particularly results from long time concession contracts and is based on estimates of implementation costs and isolated travel times, the discussion in this thesis assumes that it is necessary to advance in the assessment of urban economies and diseconomies generated considering the specificities of each city, each system and each transport corridor.