Seen on the streets of São Paulo: Car carrying tree

I saw this scene the other day. On the one hand people complain there are too many accidents, on the other...

Ingenious or stupid?

São Paulo in Statistics: Most common vehicles

In São Paulo you quite often seen members of the CET, a municipal road traffic organisation which motorists love to hate for its application of traffic penalties and fines. Quite often they're not applying fines but collecting traffic data.

Here is some of that data summed up in a nice interactive infographic courtesy of the Folha de São Paulo.



It is interesting to see the high density of motorbikes on the roads (a probable consequence of the traffic congestion), the concentration of lorries and trucks in the East of the city and the high number of buses operating close to the centro zone.

Extreme traffic congestion in São Paulo

I recently missed a flight from São Paulo to Madrid despite setting out for the airport three and a half hours ahead of time. This is what my Google Maps Navigation app was telling me as I tried to guide the taxi through the least congested routes:

You can see that Marginal Tietê (horizontal road at the top of the screencap) was not the best place to be at that time (neither was Avenida Veinte Tres de Maio or any of the main traffic arteries for that matter). This is quite normal though and at 18:50 on a weekday it's especially bad.

The fact that it's so normalised is interesting because it starts to change drivers' behaviours. Veja Magazine recently asked Paulistanos to tweet what they do in their cars when sitting out the traffic and the responses included:

I read books
I cut my nails
I kiss my partner
I sing
and of course quite a few people said they tweeted

But the one that stole the show for me was a girl who said that there was no single answer and that she did whatever she would normally be doing at the time, her example was that if it was lunch time, then so be it, lunch it was, and she would eat in the car.

It reminds me of the answer I always give to Brazilian friends when they ask what we do back home in the UK where it rains so often. Well we do whatever we were planning to do, I tell them. Perhaps human ability to accept and adapt depends on the extremity and permanence of the situation which might be why Brits have a thing called road rage and Brazilians stay at home when it rains...

New penalty fines for zebra crossing infringements

Crossing the road in São Paulo sometimes feels like a game of Russian Roulette. Anyone’s who’s tried will know what I mean. I find the best way to do it is to ignore zebra crossings and try to run across when there’s a gap. If you try and wait at the crossing you can wait a while and when you venture out the cars won’t necessarily stop.

It’s quite dangerous at first and I almost got run over a few times early on but then you get used to it. But despite it being quite "normal" it’s been getting quite a bit of media attention recently, like the front page of the Diario São Paulo above which reports that of 7007 people who were run over in the city last year 630 or so died.

There are even signs like this one on Teodoro Sampaio which officially asks vehicles to respect pedestrians:

Obviously they weren’t working very well which is why on the 8^th of August a series of hardline penalties on zebra crossing infringements were launched by the Companhia de Engenharia de Tráfego (the local traffic control & management organization) commonly known as the CET. The new rules mean that even when the traffic light is green if you don’t respect somebody who happens to be on the crossing you are considered guilty of a infração gravíssima (major infringement) and liable to pay 191,53 reais (about 115 USD) plus get 7 automatic penalty points on your license. 

Difficult to apply you might be thinking. Well, according to official CET figure they managed to apply 2270 penalties in the first 5 days of the campaign, that’s one every 2 minutes. At this rate we would be looking at well over 10,000 penalties per month which would make zebra crossing one of the Top 5 most common traffic infringements. Good thing or bad thing? I´m not sure and although we’d like to think it’s not one of the main reason for the change the skeptics will raise an eyebrow at how quickly an extra 2 million reais is being raised every month by the CET.

Skating through traffic on Rua Augusta and hitching a ride back up

Skateboarding is probably not the first thing you think of when you think of São Paulo's streets. High traffic congestion, aggressive lane switching, speeding through red lights and, according to Time maagazine, the world's worst traffic jams do not create the most conducive environment for your average rollerblader, cyclist or skater.

São Paulo is also far more hilly than first impressions would have you believe so I was surprised to see so many skaters hanging out on Saturday night on the central Rua Augusta. Then I noticed the traffic can also be used to your advantage to catch a handy lift up the hills. Check it out:

ps. This is the National Geographic picture my good friends Isaac and Shiraz recalled when they saw the above video. São Paulo 2011 vs Mexico DF 1981, 30 years and not so much has changed...