The Feasibility Study for Establishment of Passenger Rail in the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte / Brazil
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The Feasibility Study for Establishment of Passenger Rail in the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte / Brazil Marcelo Franco PORTO School of Engineering, Federal University of Minas Gerais Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil and Luiz Carlos de Jesus MIRANDA Nilson Tadeu Ramos NUNES Cássio E. dos SANTOS Jr. School of Engineering, Federal University of Minas Gerais Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil ABSTRACT There are investments to existing lines disabled or in poor condition, as well as incentives for redeployment of passenger The rail transportation, either of passengers or cargo, is transport in sections where only the cargo remained. These essential to the country's economic growth. Due to a number of lines could play a strategic role in the mobility issue because factors, in particular, severe mobility problems experienced by they are in metropolitan regions or make the connection large cities and a demand for urban transport systems and between cities large and medium-sized with a large demand for suburban high capacity transport on rails going through a high capacity transportation. period of recovery with new investments being announced both for the construction of new railway sections, as for reclamation 2. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT and re-adaptation of existing railway networks. In this context, the liability of decades without investment, necessitates a The railroads arrived in Brazil still in the Imperial period. A rational use of available resources and agile enabling to country special law of 1852, which established the security interest on develop projects for the sector rapidly and consistently. This the capital invested in railway construction, besides other paper presents a proposal that aims to make it easier to review advantages is it possible to leverage the construction of the first and registration of a railroad. The proposal is obtain a film at railroads in Brazil. The first section, 14.5 km in length and 360 ° with a spherical vision camera Lady Bug (6 cameras) gauge of 1.68 m, was inaugurated by D. Pedro II on April 30, from Point Grey Research, a Sony Full HD Camcorder and a 1854 [3]. Sony High Resolution camera with integrated GPS system. The The railways were developed at a good pace, in 1888 the images collected will be stored in a georeferenced database in a country had 9200 km of railways built 9000 km and more computer system developed for this purpose which will be able under construction or study. Between the years 1905 and 1915 to contain the record of all events by the slice, generating were built more than ten thousand kilometers of railways [3]. reports with data, pictures and location map. Applied to the In 1922, the Brazilian railway has reached 29,000 km in length, specific case of metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte/Brazil. dimensions very similar to today . The data obtained in the study of railway network BHMR and The initial policy of building railways left, however, negative surroundings, were used to subsidize the State Government, marks felt until today. A wide variety of gauges is a hindrance through the Agency for Development of the Metropolitan to the operational integration between railroads today. Tracings Region of Belo Horizonte, in assessing the feasibility of extremely sinuous added to this huge variety of gauges (gauges implementing transport passenger rail in this network. 70cm to 1.68m with the largest) are harmful to operating speed and load capacity [4], in addition, requires the achievement of Keywords : Infrastructure Engineering, Engineering transhipment, both freight and passenger in the connection Management, Spatial Analysis, Digital Image Processing. between extensions of different gauges. Another important negative mark is the fact that they created regional networks scattered and isolated preventing the integration of Brazil by 1. INTRODUCTION rail [3]. After the peak, lived until 1920, the railways in Brazil began to decline with fewer investments, being passed over Rail transport in Brazil is experiencing a resurgence after during the 50s and 60s in favor of highways, culminating in the decades with little or no investment, mainly in the construction extinction of RFFSA - Federal Railway S/A in 1999 after of new roads. Due to economic growth in recent years, there privatization of its lines . has been an increase in government investment and private Figure 1 shows the map of the current Brazilian railway, sectors of the rail industry, both in cargo as passenger. Only the showing the existing railway lines to their utility beyond the federal government nods investments of $ 45 billion over the lines currently under construction or planned your deployment. next 25 years when it intends to build about ten thousand After privatization, the passenger was abandoned and the kilometers of new railways ( Ministry of Transport ) [1], which investments made only in the way in which the transport of corresponds to more than one-third the length the current mesh. cargo were profitable, leaving the remaining stretches of high In addition to these investments, can be considered promising economic and historical importance to the communities they the creation of the EPL - Logistics Planning Company S/A, a served, as in the case of railway connecting Belo Horizonte to company of the federal government in charge of strategic Ouro Preto [2] which is not operational, and much of its length, planning in the area of transport infrastructure. there is no longer the track superstructure. Figure 2. BHMR Railway Network Traveled. Source: Prepared by author Figure 1. M Malha Ferroviária Brasileira. The BHMR faces severe mobility problems, especially in the Source: Ministério dos Transportes. [1] capital and neighboring towns, where there was intense process of conurbation. These problems are the result of the lack of After this long period without massive investments in the appropriate transport policies for decades, the lack of urban public sector, the current situation indicates some changes in planning at metropolitan level, or even at the municipal level the line of government investment, a recovery and a new phase for most of the municipalities. Coexists with a low efficiency of expansion of railroads in the country. Adding public and of public transport where the transport is done almost private investment, the government program called CAP - exclusively in bus mode. The subway BH (a metropolitan train Railways ( Growth Acceleration Program ) provides for the surface) going on for decades in just one line of only 28 km. recovery of the existing network and the construction of ten There are still road corridors, whose capacity is already thousand kilometers of new railways in a period of 25 years, exhausted, strangled with numerous urban bottlenecks. according to the Ministry of Transport. Among the PAC These problems, coupled with the intense economic growth and Railways are building the New Transnordestina linking the improving the population's income in recent decades, has interior to the ports of the Northeast PECEM (EC) and SUAPE dumped a number increasing of vehicles on the city streets of (PE), the Railway East-West Integration (FIOL) linking the BHMR, creating more delays and congestion, fueling the North-South Railway to the port Ilheus-BA, the expansion of phenomenon known as positive feedback [7] where the own North-South Railway, the Railway Integration Midwest - increase in the number of cars reduces the efficiency of FICO and other, as shown in Figure 1. The program also transportation causing it to lose users who migrate to the provides for the deployment in the country 's High Speed Train private car which in turn will create more slowly and jams. – TAV on Portuguese. There are also investments within the While the population of Belo Horizonte has grown at a rate of Ministry of Cities related to PAC Urban Mobility in cities that 0.94% per annum, the vehicle fleet has grown at a rate of include rail transport with Metro , LRT or Monorail. 5.22% [8] so that, according to the 2010 Census, Belo Horizonte has one motorization rate in 2010 of 564 vehicles per 3. PUBLIC TRANSPORT IN THE METROPOLITAN thousand inhabitants. REGION OF BH Another difficulty is the absence of a metropolitan traffic management and transport. The three largest cities, Belo The Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte - BHMR was Horizonte, Betim and Contagem have municipal companies created in 1973 by the military regime with 14 municipalities. which are responsible for the administration, and the State only After the 1988 Constitution, has undergone several additions the management of the lines intercity passenger and state have not obeyed a criterion urban or economic well defined highways. The existing municipal bus transportation are not that justified [5]. Today, with 34 municipalities and a total integrated with each other or the metropolitan lines. According population of 5,414,701 inhabitants according to the 2010 to studies by IPTRANS urban mobility published by the city of IBGE Census [6], the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte - Belo Horizonte [5], the population of MRBH depends largely BHMR is the third largest country in both population and modes of transport on foot and by bus beating together, 70% of economic development. Almost half the population is in Belo the displacement of people earning less than three minimum Horizonte, with 2,375,151 inhabitants, the other most populous wages. municipalities are Betim (378,089 inhab.), Contagem (603,442 To build a future scenario in which transportation ensures inhab.), Ribeirão das Neves (296,317 inhab.) showing the mobility and accessibility across MRBH, there is an urgent historical trend occupancy in MRBH leaving the more central need for a metropolitan planning and multimodal transport. The region of the capital toward their peripheries and neighboring goal should be to ensure sustainable urban mobility translated counties (Figure 2). as a set of transport policy and traffic prioritizing non- motorized modes and collective transport, effectively, that does not generate spatial segregation, which is socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable (Ministry of Cities) [8].