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Sao Paulo Seeks Road Map to Life Without Traffic Jams

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Times Staff Writer

Like snipers, the agents keep watch from atop high buildings, scanning the streets with binoculars, talking by radio, searching for signs of movement.

Or, more accurately, the lack thereof.

These sentinels act as shock troops in the battle to tame Sao Paulo’s horrendous traffic. They are on the lookout for pileups, potholes and any other pitfall that could spawn one of the monster traffic jams for which this city has become known.

More than 100 roadside cameras assist the agents, who feed their data to a drab, bunker-like command post in downtown Sao Paulo, the municipal Traffic Engineering Center, where workers adjust signals, monitor problems and labor 24/7 to keep cars and buses moving.

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This city of 18 million is the industrial and financial heart of Brazil and a powerhouse in the world’s ninth-largest economy. It is also home to some of the region’s most crowded roads, a nightmare of tangles and tie-ups that makes Los Angeles look like the highway to heaven.

Like battle-scarred veterans, every Paulistano has a war story to tell about nasty traffic, such as the commuter’s Black Friday, when a winter storm and the start of school holidays on June 28, 1996, combined to produce a record 150 miles of gridlock. Last week, a torrential downpour triggered 118 miles of backup, in which cars moved -- or didn’t move -- at 19 mph or less.

The situation is so bad that residents -- many citing traffic as a prime concern -- voted to dump their mayor in last month’s municipal elections.

As in L.A., planners and residents in Sao Paulo are paying for an insatiable lust for cars that pushed public transit to the bottom of the agenda, despite the city’s booming population.

Although L.A. County can at least point to 900 miles of freeways to accommodate its 7 million vehicles, Sao Paulo has only one elevated expressway, which is barely four miles long and is often closed. What evolved here was a confusing skein of surface streets, a few wide boulevards and a handful of tunnels for a 5.6-million-strong army of cars, trucks and buses shuttling commuters to work and hauling goods between north and south Brazil.

The result is much less asphalt serving an urban area five times as dense as Los Angeles. Last year, the afternoon rush hour averaged 62 miles of choked roads, the lowest in several years. But figures through September of this year show a climb back up to 70 miles of jammed traffic from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., though officials attribute the rise to road work that will speed up the flow when finished.

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The really impatient -- and really rich -- have taken to the air to avoid such misery, flying high above the madding crowd in what has become one of the largest fleets of private helicopters in the world.

For the less privileged, the city’s top priority has been to reverse decades of neglect of the mass transit system.

“The previous governments really favored the private car over public transport,” said Gerson Luis Bittencourt, Sao Paulo’s transportation chief. “To improve traffic, the main line of approach is to improve public transport.”

Primarily, that means the city’s aging fleet of 15,000 buses, many of them run down, unreliable and unsafe. More than half the buses have been replaced with newer models, paid for by a cooperative of businesses eager for their employees to get to work on time.

A new two-hour bus pass and a dedicated bus lane on some busy streets have proven popular with riders. The average bus speed has increased from 8 mph to about 15, Bittencourt said.

“Our priority is to improve mass transit. But it’s not enough by itself. You have to have better parking, modernized signals, bike lanes.... We don’t believe one single measure can take care of the whole problem.”

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Prospects for improvement boil down to money and politics.

Officials calculate that up to $350 million will be needed in the next five years to make the necessary changes. But control of the transportation system is divided between the city and the state of Sao Paulo, a situation that invites bickering and inaction, particularly when the mayor and governor belong to rival parties, as they do now.

Some of the interagency tension could lessen next year, because the mayor-elect, Jose Serra, belongs to the same party as the governor.

Even so, planners warn that without massive investment, the situation in Sao Paulo could spiral out of control and jeopardize economic growth. Already, congestion robs the metropolis of an estimated $5 billion a year in business and other costs. The amount is much higher if surrounding suburbs are factored in.

Eduardo A. Vasconcellos of the National Assn. of Public Transport advocates doubling the length of the subway, which covers about 34 miles.

At a cost of more than $150 million per mile, the price tag would be enormous -- but feasible, he insists.

“It’s possible to strike a deal linking the federal government, state government and city government, and also the economic sectors that are being harmed by the extremely high congestion,” Vasconcellos said.

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As in L.A., much of the challenge in unclogging the roads lies in persuading Sao Paulo’s motorists to give up solo driving in favor of other options.

New cars are still being added to the streets at a rate of nearly 550 a day, or more than 200,000 annually. Two years ago, for the first time, the number of trips made in private vehicles exceeded those taken on public transport.

If carrots don’t work, then it may be time for a stick, some say, in the form of a commuter “congestion charge” such as the one implemented in central London, or higher car-registration fees, which would help fund infrastructure improvements and public transit.

That means a head-on collision with the city’s powerful middle class, which requires a political courage not always in plentiful supply.

So be it, Vasconcellos said.

“Space has to be primarily devoted to pedestrians, cyclists and buses,” he said. “If you think that private transport is causing the problem, then you have to restrict it.”

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