A solution for Santa Teresa while we wait for the Bondinho

Anyone who has visited Rio’s Santa Teresa neighbourhood over the last 3 years may have been a little confused. The picturesque streets that trace the area’s steep hills and hairpin bends are covered in tracks, yet the Santa Teresa tram has not been seen here since August 2011. Instead you see posters on walls and stickers in car windows showing the image above.

Back when I first moved to Rio, the tram of Santa Teresa, better known as the Bonde or Bondinho, was a major tourist attraction. The bright yellow wooden tram cars were rickety but pretty and made for an utterly charming way to get around Santa Teresa. However, although tourists and locals flocked to the trams, all was not well.

The tram cars were ancient. Sometime around 2006-07, a company named T-Trans was contracted to restore 14 tram cars but what they eventually delivered became known as ‘Frankensteins’ – a mish-mash of old and new parts with a price tag of more than a million Reais (compared with R$300,000 to restore the original cars).

One of the major problem points was with the brakes – these were mounted externally which meant that they were vulnerable to damage in the event of a collision. Despite warnings, this is exactly what happened in 2009 when a taxi collided with a tram, causing the brakes to fail and leading to the death of a teacher from Paraty. Only 7 of the 14 trams were delivered and lots of money from the project went unaccounted for.

image source

The trains were regularly overloaded. People hanging off the side of the cars made for very cool photos but every so often we would be reminded of the foolishness of this practice when someone (usually a tourist) would lose their grip and fall to their death as the tram passed over the Arcos da Lapa.

On 27th August 2011 there was a major crash which led to 6 deaths and 50+ serious injuries. It seems that the crash was caused by a brake failure caused by a substandard repair job – parts of the brakes were being held together with wires instead of using proper screws. The entire Santa Teresa tram system was taken out of commission. This was when the ‘tram teardrop’ image (at the top of the post) was adopted by residents to show their sadness at what had happened and also their unhappiness that the such an important part of Santa Teresa’s identity was missing. One of the reasons for such strong feelings of outrage among residents was that they had been warning of something like this for years.

Since that time there has been a noticeable drop in visitor numbers to Santa Teresa and local businesses have certainly suffered. The authorities announced that 14 new trams would be created and the tracks would be completely overhauled. The date for completion was set to be March 2014. In May it was announced that due to slow progress with the track work, the deadline was being pushed back to June, but this was quickly pushed further back to November.

At the time of writing, just 2 of the 14 trams have been delivered. Testing (using sand bags in place of passengers) has only just begun and the latest I heard was that things won’t be fully up and running until December 2015! The good news is that the new trams look pretty good (the design was approved by Iphan and Inepac – organisations concerned with cultural heritage) and we are told that all safety issues have been addressed.

The first of the new fleet of tram cars destined (one day) for the streets of Santa Teresa.

But seriously, December 2015? What are we going to do in the meantime? Well, it seems a bloke called Tomáš Moravec in Bratislava has come up with a temporary solution (at least for the downhill sections!):