OLMatters

OLMobility is a project developed by students of OLM for the purpose of raising environmental awareness and respect for traffic norms and regulations that help ensure road safety.

One of the most important investments the city needs to make in preparation for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games events is clearly in transportation infrastructure. Considering alternative options such as bicycling, which could be a viable substitute to a car, however, there are major concerns that need to first be addressed.

To start, a couple of main issues concerning cycling in Brazil involve the lack of bike lanes and the extremely high taxes on bicycles and bicycle-related products, so is this really an option? The Brazilian government has been demonstrating a great neglect for the bicycle culture, which leads to a hypothesis that: The high cost of maintaining bike-related equipment. Bike lanes in Brazil tend to lead to nowhere and often they tend to end abruptly in random locations. They also lack connections between each other, which serve as a great disadvantage to the bike rider. The city of Rio de Janeiro has Brazil’s longest total length of bicycle lanes within its city’s boundaries, but unfortunately these lanes are more often than not unusable. Another drawback for bike riders is the overall lack of safety on the roadways, which can be attributed directly to drivers of motorized vehicles such as cars, buses, or motorcycles.