Public Transport in the Federal District of Brazil

Interview with Marco Antonio Campanella, CEO of DFTRANS

What is the current situation of public transport system in the Federal District of Brazil?

This government assumed Federal District administration less than a year ago and thus inherited legacy issues in various sectors such as health, education and transport. The main problem in public transport in the Federal District of Brazil was the removal of public power from the management of public transport system. We used to have a private administration; private operators managed the public transport in the Federal District of Brazil. To resolve the situation, the actual governor published a decree and in 90 days DFTRANS assumed the management of the public transport, which is responsible, in Brasilia, for 95% of passenger transport. This was the worst problem that we used to have and we have already solved it. However, the public transport service in the Federal District of Brazil remains precarious due to the removal of the public power from the management of public transport system in the past. This situation had allowed private operators to do some actions without the presence of a governing body. If the transport is public, its management and its control should be public, too; only its operations can be private. We have an unplanned system which is lacking the rationalization of transport lines. The system has not been put in place yet and it causes us a serious problem.

We do not have an electronic tracking system. Our fiscals group is insufficient to supervise all our operations. We do not have an intelligent system tracking the fleet to exercise an efficient supervision; we do not have an information system for users such as internet or mobile phone messages. These technologies are already available on the market. Unfortunately, previous governments were not worried about it and, because of that, we now face these challenges. The service is still very precarious and we do hope to change this situation next year with the request for a new car-park. The vehicles are very old; the medium age of the car-park is very high.

What is DFTRANS role in it?

DFTRANS was created in 1992 and it is a governing body, an authority. Therefore, it has a budgetary independence and it is bounded to the Transport Secretary (a standard-setting body). Our main role is to manage, plan and supervise the system. We have been trying to put our objectives into practice and for that, we have to build the necessary instruments for the implementation of an efficient management, a rigid supervision and a planning that can offer a better service to the users of public transport in the Federal District of Brazil.

Could you give us an insight into your strategies for the next years?

Our plans go as far as the year 2014 – the World Cup year – as the government is going to finish its rule that year. Until 2014 we want to rationalize the lines, plan the whole system, make it more punctual and implement the intelligent transport system which would track and monitor our vehicles through GPS and other instruments. We want to bid all the system in order to refurbish our vehicles that are operating in the Federal District of Brazil. We want to promote the system integration with the introduction of a single ticket. With it, the user will be able to use any part of the transport system for a certain period while paying for one ticket only.

We want to implement the exclusive lanes for buses, both mini-buses and elongated buses capable to reply to a growing demand. The first exclusive lane is currently being built in the southern region of Brasilia as a part of the program for urban mobility. About R$ 3 billion is being invested by the federal government in the Federal District to improve our road system, including mini-buses and trams. The first tram is going to link the Kubitschek airport to the South terminal. This is our strategic plan for 2014; a more appropriate road system, car-park renewal, exclusive lanes and system integration.

Is there any room for the foreign investors?

We already cooperate with some international partners and municipalities such as Rome and Madrid. In these countries, the public management of the transport systems showed interest in the exchange of experiences. There are foreign companies that expressed their interest to participate in the bidding process that I have mentioned above. We have the responsibility for improving the quality of life in the Federal District of Brazil by replacing a part of the car-park that is currently run with diesel; our idea is to operate it with biodiesel and electricity. There is a couple of international manufacturers who are interested in this partnership. Some of our bids will be offered to national competitors only, other bids won`t be limited at all. The ones with no limitations will be available for the foreign companies. We are very interested in intensifying our cooperation with countries and cities that have already gained positive experiences in the public transport (systems).

What are the main challenges for DFTRANS?

Difficulties persist because of the various interests that were accumulated and crystallized throughout the past years and we cannot sort them out in one day. If you want to make a more significant change within the system, you would need to meet some private interests. We believe that through dialogue and understanding we will be able to build a better system because we have the federal law that guides us to make bids; we cannot go beyond the legal limitations. We want to make changes by negotiations in order to avoid disputes and court procedures, which could complicate and thus prolong the final results of our work. This is probably one of the biggest challenges we face at the moment.

What are some of your long-term challenges?

Our long-term challenge is finalizing the bidding of the whole system, renovation of our car-park, and introduction of lanes for buses and single tickets.

What is your vision for the Federal District of Brazil?

The Federal District is a unique capital with its own characteristics. For us, there is no other city in Brazil or in the world which would have similar characteristics. Brasilia is a city-state; it is not a city or a state on its own. It was built 51 years ago and, thus, it is a very young city built in a horizontal way. Our administrative regions, our neighborhoods are far away from the Federal District center. We already have a population of 2 700 000 people. If we take into consideration the Federal District surrounding area, neighbor cities and states, mainly Goiás and Minas Gerais, we have 4 200 000 people. These people are dependent on the Federal District for the work and other activities (leisure, health services and education services). We have dormitory towns around the Federal District that are dependent on this center. 80% of formal jobs are in this central region. The transport dependency is substantial. Because of that, Brasilia uses cars as a work instrument and this is above national average. National average is 40/45% while in Brasilia it is 60%. On one side, it is because the distances are very long, and on the other side, because the public transport is, unfortunately, of a poor quality. Our main challenge is to change the public transport situation in order to persuade the car owners to leave their cars parked at home and take a bus, subway or train to get to their work. Otherwise, the traffic in the city would be a nightmare as it doesn’t have such capacity to gather for all cars in the district. 1 000 200 cars in the streets – this is not feasible for any city no matter how good its road system is. And the new cars keep on arriving. It is a model based on the major car-producers` interests – it is a model that we have inherited – not only in Brasilia as such – all Brazilian capitals face this phenomenon, and, therefore, we need to reinforce the public transport so that the cars will soon become instruments of leisure and not of work.

Lastly, I would like to thank you for this opportunity to talk to so many people all around the world. I would like to say that Brasilia, since the beginning of the year, has a new government. Our city, in the last years, was occurring in journal pages because of the political crisis that had hit our capital. Four different governors changed in only one year, so it was a very strong crisis. The current government is a result of the political forces union who made a compromise of rescuing. Brasilia with the new government on its head wants to attract new investments, especially in the transport area, in order to offer better quality of life to our people and to become a reference to all Brazilians and to the entire world because Brasilia is the capital of an emerging country which has a tremendous potential.