TECHNICAL EXCELLENCE Rio de Janeiro is suffering a series of structural modifications thanks to the two mega-events to be held on 2014 and 2016. The Rio’s context and the city’s projects of regeneration enable to expect from Rio 2016 similar performance as Barcelona 1992. The two cities passed through hard moments of failing bids to host the Olympic Games that caused a wide support from the population and all government levels. After the cities been selected to host an edition of the Olympic Games, they started similar city’s regeneration projects responsible to deep transformations all over the city. ”Barcelona’s Olympic regeneration is generally considered to have been successful” (Monclús, 2007), due the “focus on providing public space and updating infrastructure” (Smith, 2011). That is the same focus chosen by Rio de Janeiro.
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Novel Transport System in Rio de Janeiro for 2016 One of the most remarkable transformations experienced by the Rio de Janeiro will be the establishment of the new transport system in the city. In spite of the “70% population of Rio use the public transportation” (Oliveira, 2012), just a few percentage of them travel by mass transportation and that’s the main problem to be solved with novel means of transportation in Rio. Regina Oliveira, Rio 2016 Transport Director, emphasizes that “In the next four years, with the interventions in course, we will be talking about an increase from 13% to 46% of passengers that use mass transportation in Rio de Janeiro.” In addition, she completes, “The greatest tangible legacy of the Rio 2016™ Olympic and Paralympic Games will be in transport”. For it, the current transports (subway, train and boat lines) have been improved to build, with the novel transport drivers (BRT and VLT), an integrated transport network.
The people involved with the Olympic Games will be connected to the four competition areas, spread through Rio, mainly via the High Performance Transportation Ring, a network that is going to connect the high capacity transportation systems, such as, railways, subways and BRT system. On the other hand, VLT and regular buses (the not high capacity means of transportation), are going to be responsible to distribute people at short distances and to link them to the “Ring” of mass transportation. At this report, VLT, BRT, and Subway line 4 will be specially studied due the fact that they are new transport system for 2016 and because its importance transporting people towards Barra, an area responsible for hosting the Olympic Park. The first, the VLT, will be the first contact of the people located at one of the Hotels, or at the Media & Referee Villages of the Port Region, the biggest regenerated area thanks to the Games. The second and the third one, despite been used by the VLT passengers, will receive also the visitors from Copacabana region (Southern Zone), an area with the majority of the Rio’s hotels (R7, 2012).
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