Utopia in 2013, free pass attracts political class – 06/18/2023 – Politics

Ten years after the protests against the increase in fares, the free pass banner in public transport left its utopian status and entered the vocabulary of politicians of different ideological backgrounds.

Free public transport, a reality in only ten cities before June 2013, reached 74. In the wake of next year’s election race, capitals are also studying adopting the measure.

When the protests erupted in 2013, even sectors of the left sympathetic to the idea considered the flag of the MPL (Movimento Passe Livre) as something practically impossible to implement in large cities.

Author of the book “A Razão dos Centavos” (Zahar), which deals with the June protests and the zero tariff issue, UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais) professor Roberto Andrés says that historically it is rare for cycles of protests to produce effects immediate institutions. However, they usually cause mindset change.

To exemplify, he cites newspaper editorials at the time, including the Sheetwho called the protesters unrealistic and treated the issue as an impossible flag.

“Since then, the agenda has grown enormously, you had 300,000 people and today there are 3.5 million people served by the zero tariff. field of the possible,” he says.

The change has taken place from the bottom up, with mayors adopting proposals in different models, without federal or state aid, says Andrés.

The proximity of next year’s elections is one of the factors that helps boost the idea. In the São Paulo campaign, for example, the two main candidates, one on the left and one on the right, must buy into the idea.

The current mayor Ricardo Nunes (MDB) defended the discussion of the subject and cited positive data in cities that adopted the measure. Nunes’ posture coincides with the scenario in which, in the penultimate year of his administration, he still hasn’t managed to score a mark and the city is being criticized for the chaos in the central region.

Allied with the mayor, the president of the City Council, Milton Leite (União Brasil), even said in an interview to Veja SP magazine that “either we implement the zero tariff or the [Guilherme] Boulos wins the election”. The psolist Boulos is also a supporter of the agenda.

The situation in São Paulo, however, is more complex than most large Brazilian cities, as it involves the need to adjust with the state government, which is responsible for the metro system and metropolitan trains. As it is a huge system, there would also be a need for new investments to meet the demand, which would explode.

The pandemic intensified a process of flight of passengers in cities, generating pressure for increased subsidies and fares. In some municipalities, bus concessionaires decided to abandon the service on the grounds that the account did not close.

In the case of Caucaia (CE), the zero tariff had the opposite effect. In the city of 368,000 inhabitants, the most populous to adopt the measure, the number of passengers jumped from 510,000 per month to 2.33 million – the fleet followed the same path, rising from 48 to 70.

The mayor of the city, Vitor Valim, says that the idea came up in 2021, during the pandemic, as an option to transfer income to the population affected by the crisis – in some families, the extra budget can exceed 30%.

Valim says that there was still an improvement in traffic, accident rates and the population began to enjoy the city more, which also began to receive other representatives of municipalities with the aim of replicating the measure.

Although he is eligible for re-election, the mayor says he will only deal with the matter next year and that he does not see the tariff as an electoral asset. “I see the population demanding that the government provide this type of service”, he says.

The mayor claims that the discussion on the zero tariff will spread to other cities in 2024, when the municipal elections take place, since it has proved to be viable. In Ceará, the example of Caucaia should be implemented in the metropolitan region, since the zero tariff is the promise of Governor Elmano de Freitas.

In Caucaia, the city uses 3% of the budget for this purpose and says it has not created new fees to fund this type of transport, but this model is not the only one.

In Maricá (RJ), for example, the fare exemption is financed with oil royalties.

In Vargem Grande Paulista, in the interior of SP, the administration of Mayor Josué Ramos (PL) created a transport fund with part of the amount that businessmen would pay as a transport voucher, in addition to fines, publicity on buses, blue zone and car rental. terminal stores.

Ramos says that the idea arose in 2017, when he began to be pressured by the concessionaire in the city to increase the tariff and, as he did not, the contract was terminated.

“Overnight, I had to put vans to operate in the city and I had no way of charging, and then the idea of ​​putting the free vans came up. Evidently, the population began to understand that it was even better than it was before and, with that, the idea of ​​creating the tariff [zero]”, says he, who is a former bus collector.

Later, when doing the math, he ended up verifying that it would be cheaper for the city to embark on the zero tariff than to return to the traditional concession model.

In 2019, the free service effectively started, and since then, monthly passengers have grown from 40,000 to 110,000. Among the benefits beyond transport, Ramos says that there are already companies that intend to move to the city due to the lower amount they will spend on transport vouchers and that the number of people missing medical appointments has dropped.

Although he admits that the free pass will guide the elections, he defends that the subject be treated without ideological divisions and not in an electoral manner.

“My view is that this system can be implemented anywhere”, he says, adding that the account must be divided among the three entities of the Federation.

Although the loudest bet in the Lula government (PT) so far is to encourage cheaper cars, there are some initiatives at the federal level that put zero tariffs on the horizon.

One of them is the bill by Federal Deputy Jilmar Tatto (PT-SP), who was Transport Secretary of São Paulo in June 2013. As in the case of Vargem Grande, he foresees the creation of a fund using the voucher transport, an obligation of companies.

The other is a PEC (proposed amendment to the Constitution), by Luiza Erundina (PSOL), which creates a single mobility system, in a model similar to the SUS (Sistema Único de Saúde), and is in the phase of collecting signatures (they are 171 needed for consideration).

The proposal was formulated together with entities such as the National Association of Public Transport (ANTP), the Free Passes Movement (MPL) and the Brazilian Institute for Consumer Protection (Idec).

Rafael Calabria, coordinator of urban mobility at Idec, says that there is also currently an attempt to find a more immediate plan to help municipalities financially.

“The government is working on two fronts: in a new legislation, it will create new ways to help the municipalities to lower the tariff and, on the other hand, a more immediate program that provides new fleet to the municipalities to also manage to lower the local system and help in the search for zero tariff”, he says.

According to a survey by the Triple Zero Mobility Coalition, a group of entities related to the transport area of ​​which Idec is part, the state of São Paulo leads the ranking with 21 cities with free pass, followed by Minas Gerais (18) and Paraná (10 ). Among them, Caucaia, Ibirité, Maricá, Paranaguá, Balneário Camboriú, Formosa and Assis have more than 100 thousand inhabitants.