The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has approved a loan for $70 million to Uruguay to support a public transport system in the eastern section of Montevideo as an alternative to individual transport.
The Montevideo Urban Transportation Program II will finance the second stage of the Urban Mobility Plan, which the Municipality of Montevideo is presently carrying out with IDB support in the city’s northern and western sections.
The objective of the program’s second phase is to design and implement a public transportation system based on a high quality bus service in the Avenida Italia corridor. Included is the construction of exclusive lanes and the organization needed to operate the system.
Montevideo’s Avenida Italia corridor carries 366,000 passengers daily, 69 percent of whom use public transport.
By 2017, the program aims to reduce trip times by 10 percent during peak hours, cut greenhouse gas emissions from passenger vehicles by 30 percent, reduce operating costs of the public transport system, and improve road safety.
The program will implement a bus mass transit system using exclusive lanes along the entire Avenida Italia, connecting Parque Roosevelt in Ciudad de la Costa with downtown Montevideo. Included will be exclusive public transport lanes, stations, terminals, and intelligent management systems.
