[This is an EXCERPT from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy's development update: read the whole piece, with photos, here. -Ed.]

Rio de Janeiro, known as the Marvelous City, is planning the implementation of a marvelous BRT. The proposed 33-kilometer T5 BRT corridor will run from Penha in the Northern end of the city, to Barra da Tijuca, a seaside community in the South that has seen explosive growth in the last 20 years. While Barra da Tijuca’s apartment buildings by the beach resemble the landscape of Miami, the T5 will pass through some of the cities most famous shantytowns or "favelas," including Cidade de Deus, immortalized in the film "City of God."

In some neighborhoods along the route, bicycles account for at least 8 percent of daily trips, and this figure is likely around 10 – 15 percent in many areas, according to bicycle expert Zé Lobo of the Rio-based NGO, Transporte Ativo. In these neighborhoods, bicycle access to the BRT will be essential. That is why Rio’s urban planning institute, the Instituto Pereira Passos, planned a workshop with Transporte Ativo and the Dutch NGO Interface for Cycling Expertise (I-CE), in which ITDP also participated.

In the design exercises, participants planned bicycle parking at the transit stations, traffic calmed areas in the neighborhoods around the stations with maximum speeds of 30 kilometers per hour, bike lanes leading to the stations, and bike lanes running parallel to the BRT corridor. "The traffic around the stations is already slow, so it would not be difficult to make it safe for all levels of cyclists," said Alan José, an urban planner at the company that plans and runs Rio’s subway. "Also, there is enough road space at the area we studied to have a bicycle path along the corridor, and present demand is high, so we included an off-road path on either side of the BRT," explained José.

"The workshop was important because integrating the bicycle into the T5 will help expand the culture of the bicycle as an important mode of transport," said Claudia Tavares, an architect at the Instituto Pereira Passos and the event’s main organizer. "The workshop also showed that this integration is completely possible from a technical standpoint."

Photo credit: World Resources Institute Staff