Until June 2020, the service between Deodoro and Central do Brasil, the stretch served by the Deodoro, Japeri and Santa Cruz lines, worked in the following manner:

  • Deodoro Service - worked with regular trains and circulated on lines 1 and 2 at most stations
  • Japeri and Santa Cruz Services - worked with an express service and circulated on lines 3,4 and 5 at most stations.

As Japeri and Santa Cruz are extended services, that serve most passengers who undertake a commute to work everyday, they need to work with short intervals between trains to meet the demand. Therefore, at some times of the day,  trains on these services used to get very full and had to stop frequently at signals. Meanwhile, on the Deodoro Service, which is a great deal shorter, trains ran much emptier.

The interconnection between the Santa Cruz and Deodoro lines was the best way we found to balance this operation, making a greater number of seats available and eliminating conflict points along the trajectory, which hindered the flow of trains. We know that many people prefer the express routes, but in practice, with the need to wait for green lights due to the circulation of two extended services on the same lines, the travel times between the express trains and the regular trains ended up almost being the same.

Accordingly, since June 2020, the circulation takes place in the following way:

  • Deodoro and Santa Cruz Services  - works with regular trains
  • Japeri Service - works with an express service.

The results of this is a simplified operation, travel times and intervals between trains can be reduced and, consequently, the trains naturally become less full.