The In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) has ap­proved a US$125 mil­lion loan to im­prove sus­tain­able ur­ban mo­bil­i­ty in São Bernar­do do Cam­po, a mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty of 800,000-plus in­hab­i­tants in the south­ern out­skirts of São Paulo, Brazil.

The loan, the sec­ond for the pro­gramme, will fi­nance in­fra­struc­ture works, pro­mote the use of pub­lic trans­porta­tion, boost traf­fic safe­ty and sup­port moves to re­duce trans­port-re­lat­ed green­house gas emis­sions. Un­der the five-year pro­gramme, it will be adopt­ed a new op­er­at­ing mod­el, with the con­struc­tion of 45 kilo­me­tre of ded­i­cat­ed lanes for bus­es as well as bus ter­mi­nals and sta­tions and a bi­cy­cle path and bi­cy­cle route.

Ur­ban el­e­ments such as side­walks for pedes­tri­ans, uni­ver­sal ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, light­ing and land­scap­ing will al­so be in­cor­po­rat­ed. In or­der to strength­en the ex­e­cu­tion of the project 40 De­part­ment of En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment of­fi­cials will be trained in su­per­vi­sion, li­cens­ing, and en­vi­ron­men­tal ed­u­ca­tion. With bet­ter man­age­ment and greater flu­id­i­ty in traf­fic, it's an­tic­i­pat­ed that ve­hic­u­lar source green­house gas emis­sion will be re­duced.

Ac­cord­ing to IDB project team leader, Dalve So­ria, "The pro­gramme will bring in­cal­cu­la­ble ben­e­fits to both the pop­u­la­tion us­ing pub­lic trans­port, by im­prov­ing the ser­vice and man­age­ment of ur­ban trans­porta­tion; and main­ly, to the en­tire pop­u­la­tion of the city of São Bernar­do Field from the ur­ban re­gen­er­a­tion of ar­eas of di­rect in­ter­ven­tion pro­gramme."