Rio Highway Containing Olympic Lanes Opens -- On the Scene

(ATR) Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes says a new highway extension will ease transportation between Rio’s South Zone and Barra da Tijuca.

Paes inaugurated an extension of an elevated highway from São Conrado to Barra da Tijuca on May 28. The extension is an addition of two lanes built parallel to the original highway.

For the Games one of the two new lanes built will be converted into an Olympic Lane, carrying only athletes, media, officials, and spectators on designated transportation. Another lane will be integrated on the existing highway to ease traffic from the Copacabana Zone to the Olympic Park.

Paes said that opening the highway was essential for the city because the area served as a natural traffic node due to geography. Both highways are built into the side of the Rio coastline, and for many drivers are the only connection point between Barra da Tijuca and the city's South Zone.

"This relieves a lot of traffic, and with increased capacity, will greatly improve the flow between Barra and the South Zone," Paes told reporters at the inauguration. "Particularly in the morning, the access of those coming from the South Zone is almost a punishment because there was only one lane."

With the new extension an additional 85,000 cars will be able to use the highway daily. City Hall estimates that the weekday morning travel time between the South Zone and Barra will be reduced by up to 60 percent with the new additional highway.

During the inauguration Paes stressed that this was not a project built for the Olympic Games, but for the future of the city of Rio de Janeiro.

He added that the city is still working to fix the collapsed stretch of the Ciclovia Tim Maia and expects to open the full bike path before the Olympics. The second half of the path connecting São Conrado to Barra still has not been inaugurated though it was set to be opened at the same time as the new highway stretch.

"Cariocas can rest assured, we are checking and rechecking [the path] and our goal is to have the two parts opened together," Paes said to reporters. "We have the case of the bike path that there was a design error in a small stretch of the bike path. I am not an engineer, but obviously I am working so that these things were checked and rechecked permanently, so much so that I'm not even opening the bike path here today."

Written by Aaron Bauer in Rio de Janeiro

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