The city of Curitiba, Brazil, is currently studying options for a surface transportation system that can bring the same advantages as a subway system. Since the costs involving the construction of a subway are so large, Gov. of Paraná, Brazil, and former mayor of Curitiba Jaime Lerner proposed a surface train. “Cities that have complete network lines in their subways were cities built in the beginning of the century, when the labor was cheap,” he said. “It is very difficult today to build a complete network subway.” The surface axial line will use bi-articulated buses with hybrid motors supplied by Volvo. The buses will add more capacity (from 270 to 300 passengers) and a 40% savings in travel time, said Bernardo Fedalto Jr., Volvo’s Latin America sales manager. Recently, IPPUC, the city’s planning organization, concluded its studies for the first line of the transportation system. For Lerner, the goal of the new system will be to make service more efficient, with frequency of vehicles occurring more often. “The degree of efficiency and capacity of a system is when you don’t have to wait for the service,” he said. Curitiba’s bus system currently has 468 lines that transport 2.2 million daily passengers. — Stefan Rainer Harbach