(ATR) A power outage interrupted service on Rio de Janeiro’s first day of light-rail (VLT) service.
The VLT was inaugurated yesterday by Mayor Paes in a large, festive celebration. Today, service was to begin on line 1 of the VLT during the hours of 12 and 3pm with trams running every half an hour between Santos Dumont airport and the city’s bus terminal.
Around 3pm a power outage hit one of the trams forcing passengers to exit the tram and continue their journeys on foot, Rio City Hall told Around the Rings in a statement. City Hall also confirmed that there were no derailments of the train, which were mentioned in posts on the social media website Twitter.
"The disembarking was carried out safely with the help of the concessionaire agents qualified for this type of activity," the statement said. "The operation of other trains was not affected and service was restored in about 20 minutes without further interruptions."
During the first run of tests on the VLT, City Hall says that "events may occur as this is the adaptation phase," of the new system. Originally, city officials said that the ramping up of service on the VLT line 1 was so that riders and pedestrians in downtown could get used to seeing how the trams operated for safety reasons.
The VLT project cost around $340 million and is an Olympic legacy project designed to integrate another level of transportation around downtown Rio de Janeiro. While not built for the 2016 Games, Mayor Eduardo Paes said the project was "inspired by the Olympics." Line 1 of the VLT will run through the Porto Maravilha live site connecting it to Rio metro stops and Santos Dumont.
"The VLT is a mobility effort, which serves to do a lot for the city," Paes said to reporters ahead of the VLT launch. "We could hold the Olympics without the VLT. It is an effort to rescue the city center as a place that people can attend, enjoy and live in the future as well."
Written by Aaron Bauer in Rio de Janeiro
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