Fury and frustration in Brazil as fares rise and transport projects flounder

A municipal police car is caught up in the recent protests against the fare rises and expenditure on the World Cup. Photograph: Nelson Antoine/AP

At 5am every day, Paula Elaine Cardoso begins her long commute from the poor periphery of Rio de Janeiro to her care worker's job in the upmarket resort of Copacabana.

After a walk to the bus stop, she has to wait about 40 minutes to get a seat, then – provided there is no breakdown or accident – she has a nearly two-hour ride in the traffic, usually without air conditioning and often in temperatures over 30C. Hot and tired by the time she reaches the subway station, she must then line up again for another jam-packed journey to her destination.

Most days, she gets in shortly before 9am, the 22 miles having taken close to three hours. It is the same story in the evening. By the time she gets home, usually long after dark, Cardoso has spent almost a quarter of her day, and a sizeable share of her income, on public transport.

Little wonder then that she – like tens of thousands of other Rio residents – is furious that bus fares in the city are due to go up on Saturday.

Drivers stuck in traffic in Rio de Janeiro. Projects to upgrade transport infrastructure have been plagued by problems including corruption. Photograph: Felipe Dana/AP

"It's absurd," Cardoso says. "Minimum salaries are very low and basic living costs are already high so the transport fare affects the food on the table for many families."

Her sentiments are widely shared, and the fare increase has already sparked a new round of street protests.

As this week's London Underground strike has underlined, frustration is a common feeling among commuters around the world, but it is being taken to incandescent heights in Brazil's two biggest cities, where transport has become a focus of fury about government corruption, inefficiency and inequality.

Bus price increases were the spark for the huge protests in more than 80 cities last June, prompting governments to postpone the fare hike and promise more spending on transport.

But commuter costs are now creeping back up. This Saturday, Rio will raise municipal bus prices by 9%, from 2.75 reais to 3 reais (75p). That may seem cheap compared with London or New York. But for a daily commuter, that still works out at about a sixth of the minimum wage of 724 Rs a month – more in the case of people who, like Cordoso, have to use buses and trains.

Rio's mayor Eduardo Paes. Photograph: Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images

Mayor Eduardo Paes has tried to alleviate the impact by extending free bus passes to school pupils and by forcing the bus companies to install air conditioning on their entire fleets.

But this has failed to placate protesters. In Rio de Janeiro, there were barrier-jumping demonstrations last month by almost 100 people at Central do Brasil station. On Thursday, organisers are planning the sixth street rally in as almost as many months against planned fare rises.

In São Paulo, buses have been torched on an almost daily basis since the start of the year and subway systems have been interrupted this week by a wave of disruptions, confrontations and emergency brake-pull protests, forcing thousands of passengers to walk through the tunnels.

A woman gets out of a car which caught fire when the driver tried to drive past a burning barricade in São Paulo. Photograph: Nelson Antoine/AP

It was not supposed to be this way. When Brazil bid for the 2014 World Cup, one of the government's main justifications for the multibillion-dollar expense was an improved transport infrastructure. Along with the Olympics, the sporting events were supposed to accelerate a $400bn plan to upgrade airports, subways, roads and bus links. But projects have been plagued by bureaucracy, inefficiency, corruption and a general lack of dynamism.

With just four months until the opening match, more than a quarter of the 49 original transport projects scheduled for completion before the tournament have been scaled down, delayed or cancelled. Promised new metro links in Salvador and São Paulo, and tram services in Brasilia and Cuiabá, will not be ready in time.

Dilma Rousseff. Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters

President Dilma Rousseff hadpromised that a bullet train between Rio and São Paulo would be built in time for the World Cupthat would also link with the major airports in both cities. Today, construction has yet to start and refurbishment of the airport terminals – which remain shoddy throwbacks to the 1970s – will not go up for tender until March.

"It's a joke. We were awarded the World Cup seven years ago and only now we're calling tenders for the airports?" said Brazil's 1994 World Cup-winning coach, Carlos Alberto Parreira, in a recent interview.

Social networks are filled with anger, dismay and embarrassment. Highlighting how slow Rio de Janeiro has been in developing its subway system is a now-viral image comparing the city's metro to that of Shanghai's since 1993. The single short line and spur of Rio's system has barely changed and now covers 25 miles and 35 stations. Shanghai, meanwhile, had no subway in 1993, but is now a dense spider's web, encompassing 333 miles of track and 329 stations.

Asked why Rio has moved so slowly, Mauro Kleiman, a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro's Institute of Urban Planning, said the city put too much emphasis on cars, neglected long-term planning and failed to keep pace with the speed of urbanisation.

"People are angry because the quality of transport services fails to meet demand," he said. "With the economy growing, more and more people come to the metropolis. They get jobs. They commute. This leads to crowded roads and crowded public transport."

While many cite Rio's geography – mountainous terrain, proximity to the sea and complex soil structure – as the main challenge to the development of a subway network, Kleiman says such engineering challenges are not insurmountable. Instead, he says historical and political factors have undermined transport.

Rio had an extensive railway and tram system until 1962, but replaced most of it with asphalt roads. "This was when we switched from being a city of public transit to being a city of cars," Kleiman said. The government's priorities are also affected by the political clout of the city's four main bus companies, which are concentrated in the hands of some of Rio's oldest and most influential families.

Politicians also like prestige projects that can be completed during their term of office. Day-to-day maintenance and upgrades are not seen as priorities. As a result, Rio still has wooden sleepers on what is left of its tracks and rails are not regularly realigned, so trains wobble and often derail.

Boys playing football in the Borel favela. Photograph: Buda Mendes/Getty Images

Juciano Rodrigues, a researcher at the Observatory of the Metropolis at the National Institute of Science and Technology, says class politics are also to blame. Unlike many other cities, he says, the outskirts of Rio are considered a "periphery" for the poor rather than a dormitory town for middle-class commuters. Relocations of inner-city favela residents often result in communities being pushed further from the fringes. As a result, many people are having to spend a major share of their income and their time on long commutes to low-paying jobs.

The government says that is why most of Rio's transport improvement budget has been spent on the development of a Rapid Bus Transport System, which ought to be cheaper and quicker to roll out. Compared to recent decades, municipal officials say they are putting more money into easing commuter hardships. That is one of the reasons why they need more revenue.

But Rodrigues predicts more protests over the price rise. "It's awful, terrible. They're asking people to pay for something really bad," he said. "This new rate is much higher than inflation. In percentage terms, the weight of transport in the family budget is the same as food."

This is the crucial issue. Whether or not Brazil completes its projects in time for the expected influx of 600,000 foreign visitors for the World Cup, those who will be most affected by the quality and cost of transport here are those like Cordoso, who have to make the journey every day from the poor to the rich world.

• Additional reporting by Anna Kaiser