São Paulo has a population of 24 million people. With a population that large, São Paulo is larger than 84 different countries. São Paulo is a very diverse city. The Catholic church conducts mass in 26 different languages. São Paulo is represented by over one million Spanish, one million Italian, one million Lebanese, six hundred thousand Japanese, one hundred thousand Jews, one hundred thousand German and many other races including Chinese and Indian. We hope to reach many different nationalities and send them back to their home land. We have the potential to reach the world by reaching São Paulo.
The giant traffic jams in Brazil’s largest city are so widespread and commonplace they regularly top 160 kilometers. In May 2008, a logging truck tipped over on one of the city’s already heaving major roads. The resulting tailback went back 292 km, setting a then record for the longest traffic jam ever. In 2013 they broke the record with a 309 km gridlock. As comparison the 2010 China trafic jam lasted longer but was only 110 km. Motorists in the city can spend up to four hours a day battling through traffic, and in the rush hour a tailback of merely 80 km is considered average.
The metropolitan area of some 20 million people has only about 45 miles (72 km) of mostly underground rail. São Paulo has some of the world’s worst traffic jams, with commuters sometimes needing three hours to travel about nine miles (14 km) across Brazil’s biggest city and financial capital.
The São Paulo Metro has 74.3 km of underground railway systems, with 5 lines in operation and 64 stations, while the railway system consists of 260.7 km from the (CPTM) railways. Both CPTM and the underground railway lines carry some 5.2 million people on an average weekday, and a few new underground lines to be constructed are expected to add another million people to the system within the next five years. The projects expected to expand São Paulo’s urban railway system from the current 322.2 km to more than 500 km on the next 10 years.
High above São Paulo’s choked streets, the rich cruise a new highway. As the economy booms, the number of helicopters in this vast city is soaring with around 500 in São Paulo City alone, way ahead of New York or Tokyo and 50% more than the whole UK. The helicopter boom has transformed Sao Paulo into a real-life, South American episode of The Jetsons, with a constant flow of helicopters jittering through the city’s skies, tiny spots ducking and diving as they make their way from helipad to helipad. Their are a minimum of 70,000 helicopter flights within central São Paulo each year.
