Delivering freight in a large, congested city such as Boston, U.S., with an estimated population of 636,000 people, is no easy task. But imagine the obstacle course that confronts drivers in São Paulo, Brazil, with a population of 20 million people. The central municipality of São Paulo alone has 11 million inhabitants, enough to qualify it as a megacity (cities with populations in excess of 10 million are generally defined as megacities).
More than 4.5 million buses, cars, and trucks clog São Paulo’s arteries. And the congestion is getting worse. Over the last five years, some 1.3 million new vehicles were registered in the municipality of São Paulo, a 21% increase in the size of the fleet.