Learning from Failures: Avoiding Asymmetrical Views of Public Transportation Initiatives in Curitiba

What is it about?

Curitiba, in Brazil, is known for the pioneering deployment of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) in the 1970s, and its system became a reference model worldwide. However, from its very beginning, Curitiba's BRT competed with rail projects, from subway to light rail vehicles (VLT). These projects have been defended by many municipal technicians over the years as better solutions for urban transportation. From 1952, when the last tram ran in the city, up to 2009, when the municipality concluded a bid for a new subway project, eight projects were developed as attempts to resume rail transportation in town. In spite of the failure of all those projects, this article proposes that the major innovations in the BRT in Curitiba had their origins in those unimplemented rail projects, through technical and political advances that resulted from controversies, conflicts, and alliances among the main relevant social groups and artifacts involved during this period.

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Why is it important?

Technological flops are relative, once innovation is based on several intertwined social, economic, cultural, and technical aspects. We start this article discussing the social construction of technologies, the importance of interpretative flexibility, and the relative notion of technological failures. Afterwards, we describe the rail projects developed in Curitiba from 1952 to 2009, highlighting the underlying importance that rail projects had to the history of urban planning and BRT in the city.