The country has agreed that the BRT projects are necessary, and when completed, they will bring benefits to the municipalities they serve, the nation's leaders say.

Nobody is more optimistic about the prospects of BRT than Toni Lindau, director of the Center for Sustainable Transport in Brazil (CTS-Brasil), part of the international EMBARQ network, whose mission is to catalyze and help implement environmentally and financially sustainable transportation solutions to improve quality of life in cities.

"This is a critical time for mega-cities all over the world. All cities face the same burden of rapid motorization and population growth," he claimed in a message to followers last year.