OREANDA-NEWS. As one of the twelve locations for the World Soccer Cup in 2014, the large metropolitan city of Belo Horizonte in Southeast Brazil is gearing up for the increasing urban passenger transport next year. That is why the operator companies of the new Bus Rapid Transit system (BRT) "MOVE" are investing in 500 bus chassis by Mercedes-Benz. The Daimler subsidiary Mercedes-Benz do Brasil is starting deliveries of the ordered bus chassis immediately and will complete the bus fleets in due time for the operational start of the BRT system in the first quarter of 2014.

Until the third quarter of the current year, Daimler`s bus division sold 14,400 units in Latin America. The 17 percent sales plus compared to the previous year results, among other things, from the growing demand created by the World Soccer Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016 in Brazil.

Hartmut Schick, Head of Daimler Buses: "We are happy to participate significantly in the growth of Brazil with our Mercedes-Benz buses. Transport businesses in the World Cup locations are relying on the modern BRT transport system, on the one hand, and on our bus portfolio, on the other."

Schick continued: "Our Mercedes-Benz city buses are represented in around 70 percent of the BRT systems in Brazil. Thus, we contribute substantially to the realization of sustainable mobility concepts in urban environments."

The 500 Mercedes-Benz bus chassis will be deployed in the 23 km-long BRT system "MOVE", which will dispose over three partial routes and around 40 bus stops. According to estimates of the local transport operation "BHTrans" (Empresa de Transportes e Transito de Belo Horizonte), the BRT system will move around 700,000 passengers per day. The driving time between the points travelled in the system is to be shortened by an average of 45 percent. In BRT, the line vehicles travel in separate bus lanes, thus enabling rapid passenger transport in large cities like Belo Horizonte.