Fighting Resistance, a Mayor Strives to Ease Gridlock in a Brazilian Megacity
Obtido de: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/world/americas/mayor-fernando-haddad-of-sao-paolo-strives-to-ease-gridlock.html?_r=0
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — For decades, the authorities transformed this megacity into a case study of dystopian sprawl,
razing tree-lined plazas, demolishing architectural gems,
underinvesting in public transportation and blighting wide swaths with
an elevated highway and colossal Eastern bloc-style apartment complexes.
The middle class largely retreated behind gated communities, and some in the elite opted to commute by helicopter rather than set foot on São Paulo’s mazelike streets.
But
now, a sweeping movement led by the city’s leftist mayor is achieving
something once thought impossible here: challenging the supremacy of the
automobile.
The
mayor, Fernando Haddad, a 52-year-old scholar with a doctorate in
philosophy, has carried out the equivalent of urban shock treatment in
an effort to ease São Paulo’s congestion. His efforts have unleashed a
fierce debate over mobility, the use of public spaces and the limits of
political power in a metropolitan area with 20 million people.
Drawing inspiration from policies in New York, Bogotá, Paris and other
cities, Mr. Haddad has embarked on the construction of hundreds of miles
of bicycle lanes and corridors for buses to blaze past slow-moving
cars, while expanding sidewalks, lowering speed limits, limiting public
parking and occasionally shutting down prominent avenues entirely to
cars.
“I thought I’d never see a moment like this in my lifetime,” said Renata Falzoni, 62, a pioneering bicycle activist.
While
Mr. Haddad’s actions have drawn scorn from some in São Paulo because of
their breadth and hasty implementation, Ms. Falzoni counts herself
among his defenders, contending that emergency measures were needed to
deal with generations of policies producing epic gridlock across the
city.
“You need to fix things now,” she said. “The crisis is extremely urgent.”
Still,
the overhaul of mobility policies has opened Mr. Haddad, as well as
some here who are trying to use the city’s new bicycle paths and
sidewalks, to attacks from his opponents, reflecting resistance to just
about any proposal from the scandal-plagued Workers’ Party to which Mr. Haddad belongs.
“Haddad
is only making people here unhappier,” said Adriana Fernandes Paisano,
48, a dentist and die-hard motorist. She fumed about finding fewer
parking spaces, contending that allowing bicycle lanes to function one
day a week, on Sundays, would be an acceptable compromise instead of
squeezing cars from the streets throughout the week.
Mr.
Haddad, for his part, is forcefully defending his measures, rejecting
claims that they are being imposed without much consultation.
He
said in an interview that his mobility proposals were “exhaustively”
discussed in his 2012 campaign, and he pointed to statistics published
in recent days showing that traffic-related fatalities in São Paulo,
including episodes in which pedestrians are hit by cars and killed, fell 18.5 percent to 519 in the first six months of the year from 637 in the same period of 2014.
“How
can someone be against the reduction of deaths in the city of São
Paulo?” Mr. Haddad asked. Describing São Paulo as a “tense city,” he
acknowledged that resistance among some residents to his policies
remained entrenched, which he attributed in part to a campaign by some
prominent media figures who are seeking to roll back his initiatives.
Mr.
Haddad also argued that motorists were benefiting from his policies, in
addition to bicyclists, users of public transportation and pedestrians.
For instance, traffic is flowing faster
in recent weeks along highways where Mr. Haddad lowered the speed limit
to 70 kilometers per hour (about 43 miles per hour), after which a 23
percent decline in accidents occurred.
Pondering what to do about dangerous driving has long been a fixture of life in this city.
“The
Brazilian chauffeur appears to believe that it is his business, like
the matador’s, to reduce to its narrowest the margin between life and
death,” the British author Peter Fleming wrote in “Brazilian Adventure,”
an irony-soaked 1933 book that unfolded partially in a booming São Paulo.
Indeed, some here still contend that the best approach is to simply let drivers have their way.
Mr.
Haddad’s speed-limit measure has drawn broad criticism, including a
lawsuit against its implementation from the São Paulo chapter of the
Brazilian Bar Association, which argues
that pedestrians hit by cars on highways are suicidal and breaking the
law. (Some impoverished residents scrape by in slums found near these
roads.)
“Millions
of people in São Paulo should not be blamed for the death of
irresponsible pedestrians,” the group said in its lawsuit.
Despite
such resistance, Mr. Haddad, a former education minister in President
Dilma Rousseff’s cabinet who still occasionally lectures at the
University of São Paulo, is taking heart from surveys that show
relatively high levels of support for his policies.
Fifty-nine
percent of residents expressed support for building and expanding
bicycle lanes, while 64 percent are in favor of shutting down prominent
avenues on Sundays to cars, according to a poll
by Ibope. The survey, conducted from Aug. 28 to Sept. 5 with 700
people, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage
points.
Still,
supporting bike lanes and daring to use them remain two different
things. Only 7 percent of the city’s residents say they ride bicycles
almost every day, the poll found. Some who do, like Paulo Zapella, 32, a
graphic designer who commutes to business meetings by bike, tell
harrowing stories.
Mr.
Zapella described an episode in September while bicycling through
Jardins, an exclusive residential district, when a motorist pulled up
beside him and began spewing expletives, berating him for riding a
bicycle and for supporting Mr. Haddad, before accelerating as if
threatening to run him down.
“I was in disbelief,” said Mr. Zapella, whose post
on Facebook about the incident drew thousands of shares, along with
comments from others who described similar confrontations with irate
motorists. Mr. Zapella said he had not even voted for Mr. Haddad, though
he supports the expansion of bike lanes.
Others
contend that Mr. Haddad’s measures are still too timid, with much of
São Paulo still reasonably navigable only by car or on crowded trains
and buses, especially in poor areas. But some Paulistanos say the
policies are opening the way for a broader discussion of improving the
city’s quality of life, building on earlier efforts like a ban on outdoor advertising and boosting the bus system’s efficiency with smart cards.
Indeed, a vertical garden
has started to sprout on the facade of a high-rise overlooking the
elevated highway called the Big Worm. Parts of Avenida Paulista, the
city’s most prominent thoroughfare, evoked the beaches of Rio de Janeiro
with sunbathers sprawled on blankets when authorities closed the route
to cars on a recent Sunday.
“We
were raised believing that leisure in São Paulo involved getting into a
car and driving to a shopping mall,” said Laura Sobral, an urban
planner who describes the current mood of change in the city as a “São
Paulo Spring.” “Finally, we’re no longer the vanguard of backwardness.”
Others go even further in contemplating the city’s flux.
Marcelo Rubens Paiva, 54, a writer and columnist for the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, listed changes
like opening Avenida Paulista to pedestrians, improvements in public
transportation, street parties on weekends and the invigorating effect
of new immigration from Africa, Asia and other parts of Latin America.
“A time traveler from the ’70s,” he said, “wouldn’t recognize the city today.”
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário