The collective public transport system in São Paulo lost 30% or almost a third of its passengers in the last 10 years. In 2013, the system transported 2.9 billion passengers, a number that dropped to 2.04 billion in 2022. In the same period, the city’s population increased by 3.2%, from 11.8 billion people to 12.2 billion . The drop in the number of passengers was accentuated during the period of the covid-19 pandemic, starting in 2020. However, the reduction was already visible in the previous period, from 2013 (2.9 billion passengers transported) to 2019 (2.6 billion), a period in which it dropped by 9.8% and the city’s population increased by 3.6%. The data are from researcher Daniel Santini, based on information from the city of São Paulo. “1 billion trips fell, there were 3 billion a year, in 2013; in 2012, there are 2 billion. Our system has shrunk by a third. If we go on for another 20 years like this, it disappears”, points out Santini, who conducts research at the University of São Paulo (USP) on public zero tariff policies. “It’s not just Covid-19 [que causou a queda no número de viagens], we have an ongoing crisis, there is a trend line, even before covid. From 2013 to 2019, São Paulo had already lost about 10% of the number of passengers, which is a lot; and from 2013 to 2023, it lost 30%”, points out the researcher, who is also the author of the book Free Passes: the Possibilities of the Zero Rate against the Dystopia of Uberization, and co-organizer of the book Mobilidade Antiracista. According to Santini, the shrinkage of public transport trips in the city of São Paulo is representative of what is happening in other cities in the country. He claims that the way the system is financed, based on charging tickets at turnstiles, which are increasingly expensive, is running out, and needs to be rethought. “With this shrinkage, it becomes more difficult to find financial balance from the turnstile revenue. To balance it out, you have to increase the pass; the increase in fares makes the system more exclusive, and the imbalance increases because you have a reduction in the number of passengers”. According to the researcher, another way that has been adopted to face the problem of the decrease in the number of passengers is to reduce the number of buses on the streets. “If you don’t want to raise the ticket, what do you do? You reduce the rolling fleet; but by reducing the circulating fleet, less people will use the bus and, again, you have the same problem”. Engineer Lúcio Gregori, transport secretary during Luiza Erundina’s administration at City Hall (1989-1993) and creator of the Zero Tariff Project in São Paulo, states that, with the successive increases in the price of transport tariffs, part of the population no longer has financial condition of getting around by public transport. “[A diminuição das viagens é decorrência] ever-increasing tariff readjustments; for example, due to the increase in fuel prices. But in general, the issue is tariff. That is to say, the fare was increasing at a rate that users were losing the conditions to pay it and were ceasing to use public transport. That’s fundamentally it.” The decrease in urban public transport trips can also be seen at the national level, based on figures from the National Association of Urban Transport Companies (NTU). The data consider monthly trips in the capitals Belo Horizonte, Curitiba, Fortaleza, Goiânia, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and São Paulo. Taking the month of April as a reference, 381.1 million trips were made in 2013, compared to 282.7 million in April 2019 (before the covid-19 pandemic), and 202.9 million in 2021. 2020, at the height of sanitary isolation, there were only 92.4 million trips, which generated a severe crisis in the transport system dependent on the fare paid at turnstiles. “The pandemic has brought to light what the specialists, operators, technicians most involved with this issue have been saying for a long time: this service has been falling in production, quality has been decreasing, and costs have been increasing significantly. It is no longer possible to pass on the cost of producing the service entirely to the passenger. Passengers cannot afford to pay this anymore”, says NTU executive president, Francisco Christovam. Zero tariff as a solution According to the survey by researcher Daniel Santini, 72 municipalities in the country already adopt full zero tariff in public transport, that is, the free pass that covers the entire system during all days of the week. According to the data, in 2013 there were 17 municipalities in the country with zero tariff; in 2019 (before the covid-19 pandemic), 31; and in 2023, there are 72 cities, showing that the post-pandemic evolution was more accelerated. “Companies started to defend the zero tariff because the model based on the turnstile revenue is no longer sustainable. And it’s not just that factor to be considered, there’s the electoral factor, zero tariff gives votes”, points out Santini. “Does this mean that pressure from the streets did not influence the process? Quite the opposite. Pressure from the streets and June 2013 were extremely important to consolidate the idea of mobility as a right”, he adds. The researcher recalls that pressure from the streets was fundamental for the approval of the Constitutional Amendment Proposal (PEC) 74, of 2013, enacted as Constitutional Amendment 90, of 2015. The amendment, suggested by federal deputy Luiza Erundina, then in the PSB and currently in the PSOL, elevated transport to a social right that must be guaranteed by the State. “This is the main legal basis for us to have the perspective that, as well as education and health, we can fight for transport with free universal access”, highlights the researcher. Last May, the same deputy presented, along with other parliamentarians, specialists and organized civil society, the Zero Tariff PEC, which regulates the right to transport and aims to guarantee gratuity in the public transport system, made possible by through the Contribution for the Use of the Road System (ConUSV). The approval of the PEC is necessary for municipalities to be able to implement the contribution, as any new municipal tax needs to be authorized by the National Congress. Gregori, who prepared the ConUSV for Erundina, explains that the contribution is a possibility of a new source of funds to make the zero tariff a reality. “It is a contribution calculated from the size of the vehicle, front versus depth of the vehicle, multiplied by the engine power because the more powerful, in theory, the more polluting the car is”. According to the engineer, after doing this calculation, the cars would be classified into three levels: large, medium and small, and a different contribution would be charged for each of these sizes. “I made a hypothesis of charging BRL 3.50 per day, for the big one; R$ 2.50 per day for the medium car and R$ 1 per day for the small car. I applied these values to the fleet of vehicles in the city of São Paulo in 2019. The revenue obtained was US$ 6.5 billion, which creates plenty of conditions to implement the zero tariff”. Another financing proposal raised by Gregori is the use of Vale Transporte, already paid by employers, to finance the system. “The Transportation Voucher, as it is today, is stupid, because from a certain salary amount you don’t want to have the discount, because the discount that is given in the salary is greater than the cost of the public transport ticket. So, it proposes to make a unique value”.
Agência Brasil
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