TOMORROW, April 3, Casa Fluminense launches the second edition of the Agenda Rio Newsletter on urban mobility, in front of the Central do Brasil, with the intervention “5 minutes to discover that good and cheap transport is possible.” 10,000 copies of the newsletter will be distributed, which will be in the format of a popular newspaper, to address the proposal 3.1 of urban mobility from the Agenda Rio 2030 .
The proposal of the intervention is to create visual interaction with the public passers-by to address the issue of the quality of public transport, the need for new forms of financing for the system, the lack of transparency, and the bidding process for the Bilhete Único [Single Ticket]. ITDP, IDEC, MobCidades, iCS, Agência Chama and Muta are participating in this action as partners.
Questions such as “Why is the ticket so expensive?”, “Can transport be good and cheap?” and “How does corruption influence the price of the ticket?” will be printed on the outside walls of the installation, which is in the shape of a box, in order to arouse the public’s curiosity. When entering, to the sound of the same noises that passengers are used to hearing on public transport, several small strategically distributed boxes will seek to answer the proposed questions. Each box shares a fragment of a narrative line that seeks to present ways for a public transport of good quality and that is accessible to everyone.
“We want to defend transport as a social right, to encourage transparency and improvements in the quality of the transport services, pointing out ways to finance the transport operation better and to lower the fares for passengers,” said Vitor Mihessen, the information coordinator from the Casa Fluminense.
It is known that two million people in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro travel from their homes to the central areas of the capital every day. The high cost of this transport often prevents residents from the outlying suburbs and favelas having access to opportunities for work, study or leisure. A worker who earns about a minimum wage spends 20% of his income on transport, when using only two bus journeys a day. As well as being expensive, the transport system as a whole is rated very poorly in terms of quality. It lacks comfort, safety and punctuality.
Transparency is also lacking to determine the actual cost of transport in Rio. The absence of this information makes it difficult to improve the planning and management of the transport system. As has been seen in investigations such as Cadeia Velha and Ponto Final, in 2017, and Lava-Jato here in Rio, in 2018, corruption is a variable of the calculation and impedes advances in the sector. Large schemes of bribe payments in exchange for tax benefits, involving Fetranspor, the Executive, the Legislative and the State Accounting Court, indicate the urgency of the bidding process for the electronic ticketing.
Furthermore, Governor Wilson Witzel, before he was elected, promised to carry out the bidding process for the Bilhete Único, which is now operated by RioCard/Fetranspor, in his government program. A promise made is a debt unpaid, and we will be there to make sure it is carried out.
