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17 Sep 06

Federal Transit Administration - Research, Technical Assistance & Training

  • Buses running in the dedicated and exclusive lanes stop at tube stations. These are modern design cylindrical-shaped, clear-walled stations with turnstiles, steps, and wheelchair lifts. Passengers pay their bus fares as they enter the stations, and wait for buses on raised station platforms. Instead of steps, buses are designed with extra wide doors and ramps which extend when the doors open to fill the gap between the bus and the station platform. The tube stations serve the dual purpose of providing passengers with shelter from the elements, and facilitating the efficient simultaneous loading and unloading of passengers, including wheelchairs. A typical dwell time of only 15 to 19 seconds is the result of fare payment prior to boarding the bus and same-level boarding from the platform to the bus.

Rickert, Tom. "Mobility for all - Getting to a transit stop."

  • Curitiba, Brazil: A city committed to accessible transit




    Persons with disabilities can enter Curitiba's "bus tube" waiting areas along with other
    passengers, using a flat surface or a small lift as shown in the two photos to the left.
    Bus tubes improve access, protect all passengers, and permit fast boarding because passengers have already paid their fares upon entering the bus tube to await their bus.




    Articulated buses on Curitiba's main routes stop alongside the bus tube stations. Bus drivers lower special bridges over platform projections in order to provide a smooth
    entrance for wheelchair users and all others between the floor of the bus tube and the
    floor of the bus as shown in the two photos to the right. In addition, four lift-equipped
    bus lines connect with main routes, and lift-equipped taxis serve points of special interest to disabled persons.

Efficient transportation for successful urban planning in Curitiba

  • After the construction of terminals and the implementation of the unified
    fare, the city wanted to develop busses and stations designed with the
    intention of avoiding fare evaders. For this reason, busses are designed
    with three doors, two doors for exiting and a front door for boarding.
    In a category by itself, these urban busses are constructed with turbo
    engines, lower floor levels, wider doors, and a convenient design for
    mass transit. Curitiba also developed boarding tube stations that were
    placed along direct routes and express lanes. To increase convenience,
    boarding efficiency and reduce fare evaders the tubes elevate passengers
    to the bus platform level where automatic doors operated by the tube conductor
    open parallel to the bus doors. Passengers pay an entrance fare at the
    turnstile and wait for their respective direct or express bus to pass.
    Disembarking passengers leave the stations through a direct exit.

    To further assist passengers, each tube station is equipped with station
    and route maps and with small lifts situated beside the entrance of the
    tube to help disabled passengers, strollers, and passengers carrying heavy
    bags enter the tubes with agility.

16 Sep 06

FRONTLINE/WORLD Fellows . Brazil - Curitiba's Urban Experiment . Solutions: transportation | PBS


  • Curitiba's buses make more than 21,000 trips a day, traveling more than 275,000 miles. Riders pay the same fare, no matter how far they're traveling. That one fare covers an entire trip in the same direction regardless of number of transfers. For the equivalent of about 60 cents, I could travel a dozen blocks -- one small piece of the integrated metropolitan transit system -- to a restaurant, and for the same price a resident of the city's poorer outlying area can commute many miles on several inbound bus lines to a job in the industrial zone.


  • Curitiba's planners designed its public transit system to be economical. Rather than building a new train or subway system and pay exorbitant construction costs, Curitiba's designers worked with existing roadways to create a convenient, comprehensive and affordable bus system.

FRONTLINE/WORLD Fellows . Brazil - Curitiba's Urban Experiment . Master Plan: History | PBS

  • The new system sandwiched a central two-lane street restricted to buses and local car traffic between wide, fast-moving one-way streets.
  • The city also adopted a trinary road design, called the Sistema Trinário, to minimize traffic in the city

FRONTLINE/WORLD Fellows . Brazil - Curitiba's Urban Experiment . Introduction | PBS


  • Curitiba has a radical approach to city planning, unique not only within Brazil but also globally.
  • What's different about Curitiba is that its planners have come up with some creative and inexpensive ways to go about solving universal problems for cities. They've invested in an extensive bus system that operates for less than a tenth of what a subway costs to operate
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