Waterway Bus Spends Less On Transport And Promotes Greater Savings
A project by the City of São Paulo aims to offer a waterway transport option between the regions of Cocaia and Pedreira by means of a water bus, which would operate at the Billings Reservoir. The project, which belongs to the City Council, emerged from a law sanctioned in 2014 by the then mayor Fernando Haddad and is getting closer and closer to its execution. The project has the technical and academic support of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU) at USP.
Professor João Ferreira Netto, from the Department of Naval and Oceanic Engineering at the Polytechnic School (Poli) at USP, comments on one of the benefits of the project: “The use of the waterway modal can have a very good return for the city. We know that it is a more sustainable modal, a lower cost modal, a modal that, due to its economy of scale and being able to allow the transport of more cargo, or in this case, more passengers in a single trip, you can have a reduced cost for that trip”.
environmental concern
The project has its logistical benefits, such as the issue of time: the project provides for a crossing between embarkation and disembarkation that would take around 25 minutes to be traversed. Nowadays, without the project, the time is 1h40.
João Ferreira Netto – Photo: LinkedIn
However, another aspect that the project values is the environmental issue, which, for Netto, is paramount: “From the operational point of view, it brings many advantages, you will be able to remove vehicles, buses or road vehicles from the streets and avenues and this also ends up favoring the environmental issue, in this case, also reducing atmospheric pollution”.
Even when acquiring vessels, this topic should be raised: “These vessels, more modern than we have seen around today, can indeed be more sustainable from the point of view of reduced consumption. I’m not even saying about the electric motor, but vessels that still have a conventional motor, but with an adequate reduction in consumption, or even these alternative fuels like natural gas, so that should, yes, be observed in the project”.
For the professor, there must also be supervision by the authorities, so that the flow of people does not represent a threat to the areas of environmental preservation: “We are talking about an area that has springs, a region where environmental preservation is essential. important. And, in the case of a system like this, you have an impact on the margins, because there is the construction of terminals, the waterway modal requires the operation of terminals where passengers can board and disembark and these terminals, also attracting a reasonable flow of people, can contribute to some impact in the region from the point of view of preservation of springs”.
Limitations
Periods with little rainfall cause a reduction in the water level in this region. These natural limitations are contemplated in the project, based on the draft concept, which is the depth of a river or dam considered by the vessels. “You have to consider the draft for the vessels and, throughout the river waterway transport system, we have seasonal limitations precisely because of the dry periods”, says Netto. This, however, does not affect the operation of water buses: “For you to have restrictions, you have to have the depth of the dam well below what probably should happen in very short periods over the course of a year. So, let’s assume, over the 12 months of the year you stop operating this system for a month, it is a situation that is acceptable and many times it is even within the planning”.