While São Paulo moves forward with a record budget of R$5.4 billion to expand three subway lines and buy 63 new trains, the rest of the country remains hostage to road transport and strikes that paralyze entire cities.

Every great city reveals its intelligence by how it moves people. The sprawling metropolis of São Paulo, with its chronic traffic congestion, has decided to consistently bet on a path that Brazil historically abandoned: mass transit on rails.

The São Paulo Metro budget for 2026 is an eloquent portrait of this choice. With R$5.4 billion earmarked for system expansion and modernization, the amount represents a 12% increase over the R$4.8 billion in 2025 and consolidates the largest investment cycle in the company's history.

The most ambitious project is the expansion of Line 2-Green, which will receive R$2.59 billion to extend its tracks 13.8 km from Vila Prudente to Guarulhos. The first phase, already 55% complete, includes eight new stations up to Penha, while the second stage will complete the connection with the neighboring municipality.

Line 17-Gold, the monorail that will connect Congonhas Airport to Morumbi Station, is scheduled to open in March 2026 with an investment of R$836.3 million. This is a work that has been dragging on since the original promise made for the 2014 World Cup, but is finally approaching operational completion.

Meanwhile, Line 15-Silver, which crosses the eastern zone between Ipiranga and Hospital Cidade Tiradentes, will have R$1.03 billion to expand its transport capacity. The monorail system, a medium-capacity technology that overcomes changes in elevation and expressways without requiring deep tunnels, demonstrates that smart engineering solutions can circumvent the obstacles of consolidated urban fabric.

Technological modernization is another crucial front of the investment plan. The installation of the CBTC (Communication-Based Train Control) system on all lines is underway, a technology that replaces the old fixed signaling with continuous digital communication between trains and the control center, allowing shorter intervals between trains and greater operational safety.

Platform screen doors, physical barriers that isolate the tracks from passengers until the train arrives, will also be installed at all stations undergoing modernization. Besides eliminating the risk of accidental falls onto the tracks, this equipment allows for more efficient climate control of underground environments and prevents foreign objects from interrupting train circulation.

The purchase of 63 new trains materializes the ambition of this expansion. There are 44 conventional trains destined for Lines 1-Blue, 2-Green, and 3-Red, plus 19 monorails for Line 15-Silver, of which 15 have already been delivered by the manufacturer.

The financing model adopted in São Paulo combines public resources with private partnerships, demonstrating that contractual engineering can be as sophisticated as civil engineering. Line 6-Orange, built entirely through a PPP, is expected to transport 600,000 passengers per day when completed, a volume nearly equivalent to the total daily ridership of Rio de Janeiro's subway.

The Rio de Janeiro case is precisely the bitter counterpoint that O Globo's editorial uses to defend rail expansion as state policy. The bus drivers' strike in Rio, which erupted last Monday, revealed the vulnerability of a metropolis that depends almost exclusively on buses for its daily mobility.

With buses idled in depots, residents of Rio faced overcrowded trains and subway cars or resorted to ride-hailing vehicles with fares inflated by high demand. The collapse demonstrated, in practice and on the skin of the worker, that the predominance of road transport is not just a matter of outdated engineering, but a concrete social risk.

Historically, Brazil has incentivized the automobile industry and road construction as central axes of its transport policy. The rail network not only stopped expanding but actually shrank: Rio's urban trains, which once transported 1 million passengers daily, today serve less than a third of that number.

Freight transport repeats the same structural imbalance. While the federal government tries to unlock eight rail auctions totaling 9,000 kilometers in length and requiring R$140 billion in investments, the relentless math reveals that each kilometer of track costs an average of R$27 million, more than three times the cost of an equivalent highway.

Dependence on iron ore is another symptom of the national rail anemia. In 2025, iron ore represented 73% of everything that moved on Brazilian rails, with Vale alone handling 301 million tons in a vertically integrated model that connects mine, railroad, and port, but leaves out the diversification of cargo that could irrigate other productive regions.

The Chinese presence on the Brazilian rail horizon, with state-owned companies like CRRC and CCCC studying projects ranging from the São Paulo Intercity Train to the Fico-Fiol corridor, signals that international capital sees rail as strategic infrastructure. For China, which imports 70% of Brazilian soybeans and corn, sorting out export logistics is literally a matter of food security.

While Brasília insists on distributing tax incentives to the automobile industry, cities like Salvador, Fortaleza, and Niterói are beginning to implement their first light rail systems (VLTs), understanding that 21st-century mobility demands medium- and high-capacity modes. The Light Rail Vehicle operates with a third rail or catenary, takes up less road space than BRT, and offers comfort, predictability, and zero local emissions of pollutants.

The São Paulo urban rail network already approaches 400 kilometers in length, including trains and subways operated by different concessionaires. It is a modest figure compared to Shanghai or Moscow, but it represents a patrimony of engineering and planning that no other Brazilian metropolis has managed to replicate with equal consistency over decades.

The persistence of this project, which has survived fiscal crises, corruption scandals, and archaeological discoveries that delayed schedules, proves that the political decision to invest in rails is more decisive than any technical obstacle. The São Paulo subway is not just a transport system: it is empirical proof that Brazil knows how to do cutting-edge engineering when there is administrative continuity and a long-term vision.

The lesson from São Paulo resonates strongly in a country that traded trains for trucks and scrapped railways in the name of a road-based developmentalism that has shown unmistakable signs of exhaustion. Each new kilometer of track inaugurated in the capital of the bandeirantes is also a silent slap in the face to managers who insist on treating diesel buses as the definitive solution for urban displacement.

Signed: Editorial Staff