Brazil's BNDES maps 187 urban transport projects
The National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) released the National Urban Mobility Study (ENMU), proposing 187 large‑scale projects that could add more than 3,000 km of public‑transport infrastructure across Brazil's 21 most populous metropolitan areas. The plan, prepared with the Ministry of Cities for implementation between 2024 and 2026, estimates total investment between R$400 billion and R$430 billion and envisions a 15‑year rollout.
Projects include expansions of metro, urban rail, BRT, light rail and dedicated corridors. The first contract, for Belo Horizonte, will increase the basic network from 84.2 km to 314.1 km at a cost of R$35.6 billion. Funding may be drawn from BNDES’s Climate Fund, which targets emissions‑reduction and climate‑adaptation projects.
The study projects a 15% reduction in commuting time, a 30% boost in accessibility, avoidance of about 27,000 traffic fatalities per year and a cut of roughly 3 million tonnes of CO₂ annually. It also forecasts the creation of more than 1.3 million direct and indirect jobs each year during construction, alongside demand for thousands of electric buses and metro cars. Minister of Cities Vladimir Lima described the initiative as a "Minha Casa Minha Vida for urban mobility."