Swedish automobile manufacturer Volvo Buses has delivered 124 units of articulated buses to Brazil based Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in Rio de Janeiro.
The new vehicles will be used to offer services on Transcarioca, which is a new BRT corridor scheduled to open in June 2014.
All the buses supplied are 21m Volvo B340M articulated buses, whose bodies were built by Neobus and Marcopolo, have a capacity to carry 180 passengers.
Volvo Bus Latin America president Luis Carlos Pimenta said the Bus Rapid Transit system of Rio de Janeiro is an example which shows that investing in an organized, bus-based transportation system is well worth it.
"It increases efficiency of urban transportation, with higher average speeds and shorter displacement times, in addition to the implementation being cheaper and faster," Pimenta added.
Higher transport capacity is expected to reduce the number of vehicles operating in the corridor that would increase the average speed of the system and also reduce pollutants and operating costs.
All buses are said to feature automatic gearbox, disk brakes and an electronic brake control system (EBS).
Volvo Buses Latin America has delivered over 3,600 buses to the BRT-systems of Curitiba, Bogotá, Guatemala City, Mexico City, Santiago de Chile and San Salvador.
