THE metro in Salvador has been a long time coming. More than a decade after construction began in 2000, limited public services began on the first phase of the network on June 11 2014, just two days before the city hosted its first fixture in the 2014 Fifa football World Cup.
The project suffered repeated delays to its original schedule to open in 2003 as a result of contractual disputes and political wrangling, which ultimately resulted in the Bahia state government taking over responsibility for completing the line in 2013. When services finally began, they initially operated on the 7.6km five-station Lapa - Retiro section of Line 1 between 12.00 and 16.00 with trains running at 10-minute intervals with free travel for passengers. However, on match days, access was limited to football fans with tickets for the game.
Fast forward nearly a decade from that first opening, and it’s a very different story in the capital city of the state of Bahia in Brazil.
The opening of the 1.5km Pirajá - Campinas section of Line 1 on June 14 of this year took the total length of the line to 13.4km, including 1.4km in tunnel and 5.8km elevated, with nine stations.
Construction on Line 2 began in February 2015, and the first 2.3km Acesso Norte - Rodoviária section opened on December 5 2016. Following the opening of the 3.5km Mussurunga - Airport section on April 26 2018, Line 2 is now 19.6km long with 12 stations.
Services on both lines operate from 05.00 until 00.00, with the service frequency adapted to meet demand.
Work is also continuing to further expand the network.
In May 2019, a consortium led by Camargo Corrêa, Brazil, was awarded a contract to construct the 4.7km extension of Line 1 from Pirajá to Águas Claras, including the now-open Pirajá - Campinas section. The consortium submitted a bid of Reais 424.7m ($US 105.4m) for the two-station extension, the lowest offer in the tender.
The network is operated by CCR Metrô Bahia under a 30-year Public-Private Partnership (PPP) contract awarded in February 2014.
After opening just in time for the Fifa World Cup, the metro is continuing to serve football fans, with Campo da Pólvora station located near the Fonte Nova arena in Itaipava. The station plays an important role in ensuring people arrive and leave the game safely with tens of thousands of fans passing through the system on a match day.
“Normally when we have a soccer game, this is very crowded,” says Metrô Bahia customer service executive manager, Mr Leonardo Balbino, pointing to a CCTV image of the station within the Operations Control Centre (OCC) showing the station platform. However, Campo da Pólvora station is still not as busy as Lapa station, which is located next to Campo da Pólvora and previously coped with 50,000 passengers in a day. “The station was very crowded, it was very interesting,” Balbino says.
In May 2021, Siemens was awarded a contract by Bahia State Transport Company to install CBTC on the Pirajá - Águas Claras section, to match the system installed across the rest of the network. Siemens also provided a software update for all onboard units on the existing fleet of 40 trains and for both the main and back-up OCCs. The contract included the installation, testing and commissioning of a radio system, electronic interlockings, and wayside equipment.
Siemens’ Trainguard MT radio-based CBTC, implemented between March 2015 and July 2018, allows for automatic operation at Grade of Automation 2 (GoA2). Even though the driver starts the train manually, the system automatically takes over acceleration, braking and speed control between stations, and controls the opening and closing of the doors at stations. The system also allows for automatic driverless reversing in turnback sidings.
Line 4 in São Paulo, which is operated by Via Quatro, in which CCR has a 75% stake, is similarly equipped with CBTC with full driverless operation. However, Balbino says this is not possible on the Salvador Metro, as unlike Line 4 in São Paulo, which is fully segregated with platform screen doors, some of the Metrô Bahia network is at grade, with no platform screen doors at stations.
“Every week, we look at the demand of the week before and try and predict the coming week.”
Mr Leonardo Balbino, Metrô Bahia customer service executive manager
When installing the telecommunications system, Siemens integrated data transmission, fixed communications, multimedia, message panel and timing, as well as the electrical monitoring and radio subsystems. Siemens was also responsible for the installation of the 3kV dc catenary.
Bahia Metro has also put its own stamp on Siemens’ CBTC system. With standard CBTC systems, the signal aspects would usually show green or red when operating in manual mode, or switch off when a train is operating in CBTC mode. However, Balbino says Metrô Bahia was worried that this would make it more difficult to detect signal faults, and instead asked for the signal to show both green and red aspects at the same time when the train is operating in CBTC mode.
“For safety, we have a driver on all of the trains,” Balbino says. When the train is operating in CBTC mode, the driver must still press a button when boarding is complete to acknowledge that they are still alert, and that it is safe to proceed to the next station. The driver is also responsible for activating the emergency brake if there is a person or other obstruction on the line.
Peak timetable
During a visit to the main OCC on a Monday morning in September, Balbino explains that services are operating to a peak timetable based on ridership trends monitored over the preceding weeks. That particular week, Monday and Friday are operating to a different timetable to Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with 10 trains in service on Line 1 and 17 trains on Line 2.
“Every week, we look at the demand of the week before and try and predict the coming week,” Balbino says. “Analysing last week, we saw that Mondays and Fridays had one type of demand and the other days had another type, so we have two timetables. Normally we have more trains operating on Line 1 than Line 2.”
Services are usually quite reliable, Balbino says, but issues can be caused by the theft of lineside cabling, which in turn causes communication problems between the OCC and the trains. When this happens, drivers switch to operating in manual mode, but are then limited to 30km/h instead of the normal 80km/h, impacting network capacity.
Traction current is provided by three substations, which receive 69kV from the grid and supply the 3kV dc required for the overhead catenary. Each substation normally feeds a particular section of the network, but there is a redundancy whereby they can provide energy to other sections of the network if needed.
However, the system has occasionally been forced to deal with bigger electrical problems, suffering a full blackout in August for the first time in three or four years.
This caused all trains to stop, and resulted in passengers having to disembark and walk along the track to the nearest station, escorted by Metrô Bahia staff. To provide a back-up in case of future power failures, Metrô Bahia is installing large generators that would provide enough energy to move trains to the nearest station.
“It’s not possible to keep full operation going but with the generators we can at least move one train at a time,” Balbino says. “They are working on the generators now, so for the next blackout, we’ll be ready.”
The generators will also supply energy for the main systems and equipment at stations, such as lighting and air-conditioning, as well as ventilation for equipment rooms. This is important, Balbino says, as some critical equipment failed during the previous blackout due to high temperatures.
“The equipment itself was supplied by energy from batteries, but the air-conditioning was not, so the equipment got very hot and shut down,” he says. A server for the radio system, for example, shut down within 10 seconds of the power being cut, and had to be manually reset.
Depot
As well as the state-of-the-art control centre, Metrô Bahia has also developed a modern maintenance depot to ensure trains operate smoothly.
Services on the network are provided with 34 Bravo trains and six older Alpha trains, both supplied by Hyundai Rotem.
The depot is equipped with gantries to allow maintenance to be performed on equipment mounted on the roof of the trains, such as the air-conditioning system. It is also equipped with a lift to allow the bogies to be removed, and two wheel lathes including one which can machine the wheels while still under the train. The wheels are reprofiled every six months on average, explains Bahia Metro maintenance manager, Mr Caio Cardoso.
“It’s very important economically to manufacture the spare parts, and it has a lower lead time compared with shipping them from the manufacturer.”
Mr Caio Cardoso, Bahia Metro maintenance manager
The depot also features a laboratory which, among other tools, is equipped with two 3D printers. They have been used to manufacture everything from a box made of biodegradable material to store and transport radios or a fire detector nozzle made with flame-resistant material, through to a microphone holder, seat lever handle, substation circuit-breaker support, and a central pivot calibrator for adjusting the height of the nylon guides for the train doors.
Cardoso explains that being able to manufacture the parts on-site is a major time and cost saver.
“It’s very important economically to manufacture the spare parts, and it has a lower lead time compared with shipping them from the manufacturer,” he says. “It could be six months to buy another part, while here it can be made in three to six days.”
On one side of the maintenance workshop, a model of a sliding door is set up complete with all onboard subsystems to enable staff to practice trouble-shooting and repairing doors on the trains. Outside the workshop, Metrô Bahia has installed a train washing plant that is able to recover 100% of the water used.
All in all, the metro is now a far cry from the short section of line that struggled to open at the start of this century. Instead, the residents of Salvador have a modern transport network that is continuing to grow.
Additional expansion proposed across Salvador
A number of other transport projects have been proposed across Salvador to integrate with and complement the metro network.
In August 2022, CCR Metrô Bahia presented the state government of Bahia with a study that proposed the construction of a light rail line from the Piatã district of Salvador to São Luiz in the municipality of Simões Filho. The new route would be 20.4km long, running along the BA-528 road, the Avenida Orlando Gomes and the Avenida 29 de Março, and would provide interchange with the Salvador metro network. There would be a total of 20 stops serving a local population of 530,000 residents. The new route would be operated with a fleet of 27 LRVs, each able to accommodate 400 passengers.
Construction would be undertaken in two stages, with the first stage running from the proposed bus station in Águas Claras to Praia de Piatã. The second stage is dependent on the widening of the BA-528 road and would run from Águas Claras to São Luiz.
The light rail line would serve the same area as a proposed Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) route, which is included in the public transport development plan for Salvador but has been the subject of disagreement between the city of Salvador and the state of Bahia.
A monorail has also been proposed to replace the suburban rail line from Calçada to Paripe. The previous governor of Bahia, Mr Rui Costa, signed a contract in 2019 to launch an elevated monorail project that will link the commercial district of Salvador with Ilha de São João in Simões Filho.
Skyrail Bahia, a consortium of Build Your Dreams and Metrorail, was selected to construct and operate the line in 2019 under a Reais 1.53bn public-private partnership (PPP). The 19.2km, 21-station line was to have capacity for 150,000 passengers a day.
Originally planned as a light rail project, the line will use part of the alignment of the 13.6km suburban line from Calçada to Paripe. Buildings at the line’s 10 stations will be retained and converted for other purposes.
