Brazil’s love of the car begins to backfire for political leaders; Anger over poor investment in public transport

Last updated: June 25, 2013 4:26 pm

Brazil’s love of the car begins to backfire for political leaders

By Joe Leahy in São Paulo

In Entreatos, a documentary film about his election in 2002, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former Brazilian president, describes his “middle-class” pride when he bought a car in the 1970s.

“I felt like a king,” said the man who started out as a metal worker in what was then Brazil’s equivalent of Detroit, the car-manufacturing hub of São Paulo known as “ABC Paulista”.Mr Lula da Silva, who sacrificed a little finger to the automotive industry in a workplace accident, took this enthusiasm for cars with him in to the presidency, a passion that he shared with his successor and fellow cadre of the centre-left Workers’ party (PT), President Dilma Rousseff.

Indeed, so successful have they been in stimulating the industry that today Brazil’s cities are choking to death with cars while public transport remains poor, leading this month to the country’s biggest mass protests in more than two decades and throwing into question the more than 10-year stranglehold on power of the Workers’ party.

“It’s part of the Brazilian middle-class dream to buy your own car,” says João Augusto de Castro Neves of Eurasia Group. “Now with these protests, public transport is being criticised. The bill has come.”

The car has been at the centre of Brazilian industrial policy for more than 60 years, from President Juscelino Kubitschek, who built the nation’s capital, Brasília, round the car to President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who invited more manufacturers in to the country.

But it was under the PT, with its economic model of pumping up consumption through social welfare transfers, pay rises and increased access to credit, that the industry boomed.

Brazil has the problem of continuing to rely on the automotive sector as the leading industrial sector

– Professor Albert Fishlow, Center for the Study of Brazil, Columbia University

Since 2002, Brazil’s fleet of vehicles has more than doubled to nearly 79m today, while in the process Brazilhas become the world’s fourth largest car market, overtaking Germany in 2010 and challenging Japan.

The problem is that infrastructure and public transport have not kept pace. The highway network in Brazil actually shrank slightly to 1.71m kilometres (although the portion that was paved increased) between 2003 and 2011, according to figures from the National Department of Transport Infrastructure.

The country’s best motorways, those ceded to private sector management, tell an even starker story. Between 2009 and now, the number of kilometres under private concessions barely rose but traffic on them increased 56 per cent.

Meanwhile, development of Brazil’s public transport networks, particularly metros, has been slow. Mexico City’s subway has 227km of track compared with São Paulo’s 74km, for instance.

“Brazil has the problem, it seems to me, of continuing to rely on the automotive sector as the leading industrial sector,” said Professor Albert Fishlow, director of the Center for the Study of Brazil at Columbia University in New York.

The car industry, dominated in Brazil by the “big four” of Fiat, Volkswagen, General Motors and Ford, represents about one-fifth of all national manufacturing. A crucial employer, the PT counts on its unionised workforce for support.

For Ms Rousseff, pumping up Brazil’s auto industry is also one way to quickly stimulate the economy. Since the eurozone crisis started, she has cut taxes on locally made vehicles to encourage consumption while protecting them from imports.

It was not until this month’s protests, however, that the political cost of the PT’s fatal attraction to the car finally became apparent as public anger over poor public transport and jammed roads boiled over.

“Given the focus of the protesters on public transport, the president is saying now she wants to discuss the issue. But not a word about the fact the government has been moving in exactly the opposite direction,” said Aécio Neves, opposition politician.

The only way forward for public transport is rail . . . São Paulo will not survive if we don’t do it

– Julio Semeghini, São Paulo state secretary of planning

The PT for its part says it is trying to build infrastructure. Ms Rousseff had set aside R$33bn for urban mobility in her “accelerated growth programme”, an infrastructure scheme, said Rui Falcão, president of the PT. “We are responding to the challenges,” he said.

The PT also argues urban mobility in cities is the responsibility of the states and municipalities.

Geraldo Alckmin, São Paulo state governor, is from the opposition centre-right PSDB party, a traditional friend of the car. But state officials admit the car’s time has passed.

Julio Semeghini, state secretary of planning, says the state is investing R$39bn ($17.6bn) in projects for the city of São Paulo that will eventually extend the metro network, including a new monorail, to a total of 200km. It is also planning intercity rail services. But these projects take time – line 4 of São Paulo’s metro has so far taken nearly 20 years.

“The only way forward for public transport is rail . . . São Paulo will not survive if we don’t do it,” said Mr Semeghini.

None of this can come quickly enough for the city’s suffering commuters. Mr Lula da Silva’s former symbol of middle-class progress has become hell on wheels.

“The traffic jams are getting worse,” says Daniela Adati, who works at an airline in central São Paulo and spends four hours a day commuting. “Many people are buying cars and you see them with only one person in each car. There’s no way this can continue.”