Brazil's soaring Comet
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The Editor concludes his report from South America with a look at the booming bus business .
THERE were 300 drivers asleep at the main So Paulo depot of Viacifo Cometa SA (the Comet Transport Company) when I visited the place in February -at the height of Brazil's summer.
It was not a sleep-in, but an indication of the dormitory accommodation which has to he provided when intensive express passenger services are run round the clock over long-distance routes in a country where inter-urban road transport is booming.
Unlike the haulage industry, which is only now coming under effective Government regulation, the road passenger business in Brazil has been closely controlled since 1971. For instance, to ensure that there is en-route seat availability on the long-distance inter-urban services, which are the only form of transport for very many people living outside the main towns, operators may not fill these services to more than 80 per cent of seat capacity, on a monthly average.
To exceed this average is to put one's licence at risk for offering poor service; and since the licences for every route are now fully taken up, and the only way in is to buy an existing licensed business, that's a risk few operators will take.
That no such constraint applies to city bus transport is made crystal clear to the many viSitors to Brazil who arrive through Rio de Janeiro's main airport, especially at morning rush-hour time as we did. Approaching the city, old and new three-lane roads run almost parallel to form a makeshift and potholed six-lane highway (in one direction) which is jammed from kerb to kerb with cars, trucks and hundreds of buses, which in turn are packed to the doors.
Brazil's town buses are simply a more utilitarian coach — nominally, say, 29 to 36-seaters with a second door at the rear and a seated conductor. They make no concession to rapid entry or exit and are far from purpose-built in the European sense. Most are mounted on Mercedes two-axle diesel chassis, with mainly alloy bodies from half a dozen local coachbuilders.
Vertical exhaust stacks are common and a Rio traffic jam getting under way is a sea of smoking chimneys. It is also an army of dabbing bus drivers — they carry a folded towel on the dash panel to wipe sweat from face, neck and forehead. Rio is not only hot but humid in high summer.
Town and city services in Brazil are a mixture of municipal and private undertakings. Rio, for example, has a single municipal fleet and a host of independent companies whose home depots are in the sprawling dormitory areas around Rio.
Many miles away, Brasilia, the architecturally impressive but austere new capital, has a municipal bus company,and three private companies, though independents in the satellite towns carry a great many commuters to and from the big three-level bus station in the city centre.
South America's biggest city, Silo Paulo, with 7m people, has 1200 municipal buses (including some Italian trolleybuses) and no fewer than 5800 privately owned buses. There are five million passenger journeys by bus in greater Sl'o Paulo every day (the figure for London is 4f million).
Between the towns and cities virtually all the services are run by independents, using Scania, Mercedes-Benz and Magirus express buses in the main. With such a rapidly developing country, so many young people (half of Brazil's population is under 25), derisory rail passenger services, and air fares which are seven times the bus fare it is no wonder that road passenger transport is so heavily used.
Fares are State-controlled, and applications for increases closely scrutinized by a Government board; but the bigger independents are hoping for a 12 per cent increase this year.
Even with controlled fares (and an interest rate of about 40 per cent on loan capital) the profit potential is high; but so much revenue is being ploughed back in. new buildings and equipment that a net return of 5 per cent on capital is about the most that efficient, well-equipped companies can expect at present.
Precarious basis Twenty-five years ago there were scarcely any paved highways in Brazil, and road passenger transport was governed by the revealingly titled "Instructions for the Licensing on a Precarious Basis of Collective Transport Vehicles on Federal Highways." The great roadbuilding programme, which I mentioned in an earlier article, has altered all that. In the past 10 years bus and coach carryings have grown at 14 per cent a year — they totalled 226,000 million passenger-kilometres in 1971.
Intercity services have been transformed, and now offer hostess-staffed overnight sleeper coaches, complete with toilets, meal service and two-way radio control.
My introduction to Brazil's inter-city facilities was in daytime. travelling the 440km from Rio to SRO Paulo on a non-scheduled run in a locally-built 11-metre air-sprung Scania 115 operated by the Unica company. This vehicle had a 275 bhp (DIN) turbocharged engine and Scania running gear mounted in a semi-integral structure. It is a model not made in Europe, and uses a longitudinal rear-mounted engine. One result is exceptional quietness in the saloon, where the engine is inaudible.
A typical Brazilian feature of the semi-reclining seats (with really generous legroom) was that all were fitted with lapstraps. And like almost all long-distance vehicles it had a rear toilet and a small servery to produce ice-cold drinks or hot coffee at frequent intervals.
Although this liquid intake is essential in Brazil's heat (and air-conditioning is only just starting in the psv world) the country is not dry. When it rains, it rains!
It rained! The daily mid-afternoon storm was fiercer and longer than usual. Visibility was down to 30 yards, the blue lightning flickered on well into the darkness, we passed cars and trucks which had spun off, and on one occasion a truck wheel rolled past in the gloom, travelling in the opposite direction with no clue as to where it had come from.
Despite all this our driver barely slowed; nor did he when the windscreen suddenly shattered with a bang and he had to switch the wipers off; nor yet did he when the windscreen finally fell. in. When we arrived in SS° Paulo he was sitting soaked to the skin in a heap of glass — and smiling.
Dedication? Maybe, The soaring comet Scratch a Brazilian and you find — a Pole, a Japanese, a German, a Swede. South America's biggest independent bus company, Via0 Cometa SA, headquartered in Sd:o Paulo, was founded by an Italian, Tito Mascioli, and now his sons Arturo and Felipe run a 1,000-bus fleet which would be the envy of many in Europe. With 600 Scania buses, Cometa is also the biggest private operator of Scania vehicles in the world.
Cometa is not just big. It is meticulously organized and managed, sets itself high standards in every department -and earns enough money to be able to live up to them. It is self-contained, too, even to the extent of having its own print shop for producing all its tickets, waybills and timetables.
It is a scrupulous timekeeper on schedules and has two-way radio to monitor the progress of its long-distance buses as well as to receive immediate information about breakdowns — or road blockages which may require following buses to be diverted or turned. Cometa has 65 fixed radio points, eight VHF repeater stations and about 500 mobile sets in use.
The company's telecommunications network links its agents, 33 terminal points within its operating radius of 400 miles from no Paulo, and its 18 regional depots.
Canny computing Cometa was one of the first Brazilian businesses to buy a computer, in 1961, but used it cautiously at first. Nothing now goes on computer which could be done better or more cheaply by other means, but Cometa has nevertheless bought a second-generation Burroughs 556 which controls stock levels and purchases, payrolls and maintenance scheduling, and is used for the company accounts, •statistics, load planning, budgeting, operational costing, recording ,tyre costs and keeping track of individual vehicle lives against a replacement policy.
The Scania 115 buses, for instance, are scheduled to run for six to seven years on inter-urban work or four to five years on eity duty. (Although Cometa operates mainly on inter-urban express, it runs town services in two middling size places, Ribeirao Preto and Campinho; at the latter the company has recently shut its privatelyowned tramway because of the system's inflexibility.)
I asked for some sample statistics and quickly learned that the fleet runs 8m kilometres a month on inter-urban work; that there are 70 buses in each direction every 24 hours on the Rio-no Paulo route alone; that the company has 4500 employees, of whom 1500 are drivers; that the fleet passenger-kms per month total 200m; that the 275 bhp rear-engined Scania 115s average 2.7km /litre (7.6mpg) on main-road runs and 1.7km /litre (4.8mpg) in town; and that Cometa carries 52 per cent of the bus passengers travelling between no Paulo and Rio.
The employees of Cometa include no fewer than 420 skilled fitters and 1000 other workshop staff.
Selection of drivers includes skill and aptitude tests well above the Government standards demanded for psv drivers; and the company provides high levels of driver training. Snr Felipe Mascioli, joint m.d., confided to me that drivers suitable for urban buses seldom made the grade to the interstate expresses.
Once engaged, Cometa staff have excellent conditions and facilities. The no Paulo base, for instance, has a big, bright canteen of typically Brazilian spotlessness, where staff pay only 15 per cent of the real cost of meals. Several bases have dormitories for drivers at the awayfrom-home end of long-distance services. The 400-bed first-floor dormitory ,at the main base has two two-tier bunks to each room and is built behind the main offices in the quietest part of the depot. It has all mod. con, including numerous showers.
Psv drivers in Brazil are only allowed to spend eight hours at the wheel on daytime schedules, with a legal spreadover limit of 10 hours, but on night services this is reduced slightly — 7hr 52min maximum driving and a 9hr 52min spreadover.
Services, too, are strictly scheduled by the state on safety grounds. The most heavily used route, Rio-no Paulo, is scheduled at 6hr 15min for 445km (227 miles) but the driver is allowed a 15min tolerance and so may take as little as 6hr. The minimum running time, however is fixed at a strict 5+hr — and woe betide any company which makes a habit of fast running.
On this route the single fare in a 36-seat 12-metre express coach with semi-reclining seats is 20 cruzeiros (£1.50), tha same fare as the train — which takes the same time!
, However, passengers have the option of booking on the de luxe Cometa service, with just 16 fully-reclining armchair seats in the 12m body, and a hostess to serve coffee, iced drinks and a tray meal en route. The seats really are comfortable enough — and horizontal enough — to sleep in, and the fare is exactly double the standard rate. In each case, there is a 5cr (about 30p) tax on the ticket, additional to the fare quoted.
The vehicles used on these services have alloy bodies built by Ciferal, of Rio. Aluminium alloy is essential in the Sro Paulo area because the combination of factories and a humid atmosphere produces the most ravaging corrosion. Even using alloy, some buses have to have new roofs 'after only four years.
The Brazilian-built Scania express vehicles cost around £20,000 complete with fittings but Cometa — which buys them in batches of 50 or 100 — doesn't turn a hair at this. The company was weaned on pricy but robust vehicles, having built its express services with massively constructed, air-sprung GMs which are only now being sold off (to another user) after 20 years' really hard work.