The São Paulo City Hall deployed 202 light arches along the 2.5 kilometers of Avenida Paulista in this year’s Christmas decorations. With an average of one arch every ten meters, the landscape has become a scene for photos and selfies, becoming popular with travelers touring the region. The problem is that the arches were installed above the cycle path which crosses the road. Not close. Not close. Up. It didn’t take long for the space to become a scene for fights and arguments, especially at night when the lights are on.
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Cyclists and e-scooter riders, who usually compete for the road, now have to avoid children, strollers, tourists, improvised tripods and even food carts, drawn to the cycle path in search of photos – or to enjoy the flow of people. Some have even started offering professional photo services on the go.
On the illuminated Paulista, the sound of cyclists’ bells began to rival even that of car horns – a rare occurrence on a road known, by São Paulo standards, for its more formal traffic. The evening the GLOBO report was released on site, the less patient cyclists were swearing and the pedestrians, aware that they were invading the space, ignored them. Many photos recorded formal smiles. Most of the time, cyclists and pedestrians ended up unintentionally sharing the frames.
For cyclist Luiz Henrique, 54, who was riding with a group on the avenue, the conflict is inevitable. He doesn’t blame pedestrians for the search for the perfect photo, but demands a response from public authorities.
— The CET (Traffic Engineering Company) could separate one lane of the avenue for cyclists and leave the cycle path, at the end of the year, so that people can take photos, right? — he suggested.
Pedestrians fought for a few spare seconds to record images in the “tunnel of light,” as click-inviting as its name suggests. And with every click, a near miss. Every time you brake, there’s a fear.
Tourists from Salvador and towns in Minas Gerais, who were in the middle of the cycle path and preferred not to identify themselves, said they did not understand the dynamics of the place. If the city put up a stage, they reasoned, someone would have to man it.
—Why prepare something that cannot be used? — asked the minor, who was waiting with his wife and two children for the opportunity to take a photo. —Are we wrong to be here? If so, I didn’t know it. But the city council also placed the decoration right in the middle of the train tracks, he reflects.
The couple from Bahia, during their first visit to the capital São Paulo, on the border between the sidewalk and the cycle path, even tried to respect the flow. But he also couldn’t resist taking a few photos.
— We look here and there, but the bike bells don’t stop — said the boyfriend, with a yellow smile and his cell phone in hand, while the GLOBO report, even for professional reasons, ended up being an additional obstacle on the cycle path.
When questioned, the CET declared that it was monitoring the Christmas decoration points installed by the town hall, with particular attention to areas with heavy pedestrian traffic.
“The teams monitor flows on the site and can adopt operational measures to reduce conflicts and ensure road safety, particularly during periods of high traffic,” the agency specifies in a note.
Illuminated Christmas is an initiative of the City Hall which, in total, has invested around 30 million reais in public resources in festive decorations spread throughout the Center. According to municipal management, the date had not received such support in at least a decade.
The actions began at the end of November and will continue until January 6. A calculation carried out by the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) at the request of the Municipal Department of Culture estimates that the official end-of-year program in São Paulo — which also includes the São Silvestre International Race and New Year’s Eve in Paulista — generates an impact of 2 billion reais on the city’s economy. The administration, in turn, estimates the jobs created at 18 thousand.
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