Rio Transit, one unsolved puzzle for the Games

The nightmare Elizabeth Ferreira lasts more than two hours and daily repeated every time she gets on the bus, which travels close to your home, five minutes from the Olympic Park in Rio de Janeiro, to the center where she works, the 43 km away.

Missing exactly one month to the start of the Olympic Games, on August 5, stadiums and facilities are almost ready, but the threat insufficient public transport to water the biggest party in world sport.

To this restlessness sum up, although the threat of virus zika, which took several athletes and tourists to give up the Rio-2016, the increase in the records of homicides and assaults in Rio and political instability unleashed by the judgment of impeachment underway away against President Dilma Rousseff.

It is also the ills list the recent suspension of the anti-doping laboratory activities of the city and the failure of the Rio state amid the worst recession in decades Brazil suffers with police, teachers and doctors claiming payment of back wages.

"Welcome to hell"

"Welcome to hell," read a banner in English, aired on Monday at the International Airport Tom Jobim - repeating the welcome message presented to passengers for a week, made by police officers who complain about the lack of money even to buy toilet paper at police stations.

"The Olympic Games can be a failure," he warned the own interim governor of the state, Francisco Dornelles, who with empty public coffers should choose who to pay.

The new metro line 4 - you should call Ipanema, in the south, to Barra da Tijuca, in the west, where the headquarters of the competitions is - is threatened by lack of resources but according to the authorities, will be ready in 1st August, just four days before the opening of the Games.

Initially, only the "Olympic family" - athletes, delegations and fans with tickets - can use it.

To finish the work, the state government of Rio, who declared "state of calamity" financial, will use part of the federal aid of 2.9 billion reais approved for safety.

Dornelles "assured me that the resources needed to complete the Olympic stretch will be guaranteed and the dealers did not reduce the pace. We are on schedule," he told AFP the regional secretary of Transportation, Rodrigo Vieira.

The Metro Rio, which works fairly well, but with only two lines, is used by only 4% of the population.

Thirty-seven percent use the bus to get around this beautiful chaotic and uneven city, nestled between the sea and the mountain, home to 12 million people throughout the metropolitan region.

crowded bus

A single line is the path of Elizabeth's house, opposite the tennis Olympic venues table, weightlifting and badminton, to the center.

The trip lasts two hours and 20 minutes, in addition to previous waiting up to 40 minutes. Sometimes there are assaults on the bus. Many drivers exceed the speed limit and ignore the signs, encouraged by passengers who ask hurry.

"And are overcrowded! It is mandatory that all have air conditioning, but some have not," complains this broker of medical insurance 56 years.

During the Games, thousands of tourists can experience a little of the routine of city residents, trapped in a knot of cars, buses and bikes advancing a snail's pace, amid insults and buzinaços.

The City Hall tried to mitigate the crisis with the implementation of four lines of "BRT" (Bus Rapid Transit), advancing by exclusive tracks linking the Olympic areas and airports and are presented as a kind of "subway on wheels."

Two of them were opened for the World Cup Soccer 2014. A third will make a limited way for the "Olympic family" Park and the Olympic Village to Deodoro, during the Games, told AFP the number two of City Hall, Rafael Picciani .

Then it will be opened in its entirety to the general public.

Plan B

Finally, the new subway line is not opened for the Games, the "Plan B" will consist of a BRT will make the path to the subway.

The municipal government also postponed the school holidays from July to August and decreed several holidays to help relieve the traffic. Also installed "Olympic lanes" in many streets and avenues for accredited vehicles.

The specialist in major sporting events Lamartine Pereira da Costa, the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) provides "great congestion because of the traffic and because the subway only work, at best, to a limited extent."

The new subway line will not reach the Olympic Park: you must go to BRT another 23 km to get there.

Many residents do not expect improvements. "I think when completing the Olympic works will be even worse because they were eliminated several bus options to prioritize BRT. To go to Barrashopping, which is very near here, a 20-minute drive, need to take three buses. It's absurd! "concludes Elizabeth.