How Curitiba built the first bus rapid transit system
Curitiba, Brazil, built the first bus rapid transit system in the world in 1974, a network of buses that run in lanes reserved just for them so they skip ordinary car traffic. The city set aside that land years before it had the buses to use it, under a master plan, a long range blueprint for how a city will use its land, adopted in 1966. Jaime Lerner, who took office as mayor in 1971, carried the design through construction. The busway opened with 20 kilometers of dedicated lane and 54,000 riders a day. It has since grown to 80 kilometers of dedicated lane, running through 34 terminals and over 350 tube shaped boarding stations, and now serves Curitiba and 13 neighboring municipalities. Curitiba proper counts over 1.7 million residents today, and its wider metropolitan region holds 3.5 million people across more than 24 municipalities.
The network is 4 times longer today than at its 1974 launch, a MAOWCE calculation from the 2 dated figures source 1 reports.
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| 1974, at launch | 20 |
| Today | 80 |
Ridership peaked in 2014 and has not fully recovered
Daily ridership rose from 54,000 riders in 1974 to a peak of 2.4 million a day in 2014. The coronavirus pandemic cut ridership to a little over 710,000 riders a day in 2020, the lowest point in this record. Ridership recovered to 1.1 million riders a day by 2022, still under half the 2014 peak.
2020 is the pandemic low point, not a typical year. Ridership recovered afterward but stayed under half the 2014 peak by 2022.
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| 1974 | 0.054 |
| 2014 | 2.4 |
| 2020 | 0.71 |
| 2022 | 1.1 |
Luiz Lenz, chief executive of CWBUS, the transit operator for Curitiba, sums up what that history built.
For 50 years, it has been a source of pride, known for its efficiency and quality.
Luiz Lenz, chief executive of CWBUS, the transit operator for Curitiba. Source 2.
The first electric bus took 50 years to arrive
None of that network ran on electricity until 2024. The city counted 70 electric buses running on the network that October, exactly 50 years after the 1974 launch, a gap MAOWCE calculates by lining up 2 dated facts from the same source, not a figure the source states directly. Before that rollout, Curitiba already ran 30 hybrid buses, vehicles that pair a diesel engine with an electric motor to cut fuel use, by 2016, cutting fuel use 35%.
Volvo Buses, which builds some of the new electric fleet at its own factory in Curitiba, describes the vehicle it built for the trial as a bi articulated bus, one long vehicle joined by 2 bending sections instead of 1, carrying up to 250 passengers on a 28 meter body. The bus runs on 2 electric motors rated at 200 kilowatts each, 400 kilowatts combined, and reaches a full charge in 2 to 4 hours, with a faster roof charger available at terminals. Curitiba, Bogota and Mexico City are all trialing the same design.
CWBUS now targets 33% of its bus fleet running with zero emissions by 2030, and 100% by 2050. A separate project called Inter 2 is electrifying a 38 kilometer route and aims to raise daily capacity on that corridor from 155,000 to 181,000 passengers a day. Over 200 bus rapid transit systems now operate worldwide, a model Curitiba started in 1974 and did not electrify for 50 years.