Advising on station design for São Paulo Metro

In order to improve the public transport offer for the 21 million people living in São Paulo metropolitan region, the state government formed a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) that will build, operate and maintain Line 6 of the city’s underground network. When completed, the line will be a 16km long, high capacity metro with 15 new stations.

The city’s current metro system and stations experience extremely high demands of passengers and the winning consortium of the PPP recognised the importance to analyse the performance of the station infrastructure before finalising the designs.

Our team provided specialist support during the development of the project. They carried out a study to analyse the proposed station designs, identify areas of concern, regarding passenger circulation, comfort and safety, and provide, together with the architectural team, recommendations to improve their operation and optimise the station infrastructure.

The study also included the assessment, validation and compliance for emergency evacuation (in line with NFPA-130) and sensitivity testing to assess the maximum capacity that the stations could accommodate.

Successes and outcomes

We worked closely with the client and architectural teams and applied pedestrian microsimulation models, which allowed modifications to be incorporated into the stations' design. These modifications will ensure the comfort and safety for passengers and  will improve the efficiency of the stations infrastructure.