Maira Carvalho

Without a doubt, the phrase I have heard the most since I arrived whenever I say I won't buy a car is: oh, but public transportation in Brasília is so bad; you have to have a car. That, or variations of the same thing. And of course, said by people who don't really use public transportation.

I know public transportation here is not perfect, far from it. There's still a LOT to be done so that it gets somewhere close to what is available in Europe. My biggest complain is about lack of information about routes and timetables. It is a bit of a game of hit or miss. You go to the bus stop and hope that the bus will be there.

There are some thousand bus routes in this city of 2,5 million people. That is not a figure of speech, it is actual statistics. Without fee integration, each time you get inside a bus, you have to pay the fee. That means that, to serve the population more or less well, the number of lines that have to be available is huge. There are small variations in the lines, that go from A to B through slightly different routes, or a bit close to B, leaving from a bit far away from A. Crazy. I have my opinions about what could be done about it, but this is not the post to discuss those.

But, with such a huge amount of lines, the result is that, for people who live far away, the options are very bad, unless you are okay with paying double fee to get somewhere. And people who live far away are usually, guess what, poor. For those who live reasonably in the center (like me), there are a lot of buses. And if you don't mind paying the more expensive fare (3 reais instead of 2 reais), then you have even more options.

As a result, my third day of commuting was a success. I took the car to the closest bus stop (3,5km away from my mom's house), and pretty much right away came a bus that took me less than 200m away from work. On my way back, the same drill. The bus arrived at the bus stop as soon as I set my feet there. It even went through the shortest route to my place, and in less than 15 minutes I was back in the car.

My first fear about taking the bus to work was being late every day. That doesn't seem to be a problem. The second fear was being robbed. In that sense, I can only say that of course it is a possibility and I am sure that it happens. But I guess if you don't take the computer to the bus, it should be fine. There were people with good phones and mp3 players in the bus. As opposed to what I (and most of the Brazilian upper middle class) think, it is not instant death. I liked to be part of the crowd. To listen to people talking and see how they go about their lives outside of my middle class bubble.

About the buses themselves, they are noisy and kinda old. But apparently they are being replaced gradually. And well, they take you from A to B, hopefully :)

The metro (subway), however, seems to be a whole other story. The stations I've been to were very new, well built, and had even some kind of open library, where you can borrow books like in any library, and you can give them back to another metro station. You can also donate books to the project. The trains were frequent enough. The only thing lacking is a proper integration with the buses.

Final statement: I am sure it is doable to live without a car here, despite what people have been telling me. One work colleague said the same. He has a car, but doesn't use it to go to work (well, you can't work for WWF and drive to work everyday alone in your car if you live in the center without feeling kinda guilty, can you?). He told me exactly what I suspected: that people seemed to have gotten so used to the same story that publis transportation is bad that they don't even try it.