Brazil – The city of São Paulo in December announced it would be re-tendering the largest tender in Latin America for city buses. This tender has been in the pipeline for five years (since 2013), and could result in virtually all of the city’s city bus fleet of some 14,000 units being replaced in a relatively short time period. A key aspect is that it will be a full maintaining and repairing vehicle contract for a period of 20 years. The tender also requires the operator to take responsibility for maintenance and operation of the terminals and electronic ticketing. The city wants to tender these services to private contractors and intends to do so on January 23 this year. The total value of this tender is stated as BRA71.1bn (USD18bn)! The last time this contract was put out to tender (but not awarded) was on April 24, 2018.

Currently, according to SPTrans (São Paulo Transporte), the city’s bus system transports around 9.5 million people per day, using 1,341 lines and 14,377 buses but this requires a subsidy of BRA3bn (USD750m) a year.