On the same day as the ENMU launch, the government announced a gradual phase-out of fuel subsidies, beginning with the end of the diesel discount, after international oil prices stabilized somewhat following the first ceasefire in the 2026 Iran conflict. These two seemingly unrelated announcements actually raise the same question: where will Brazil direct public funds for mobility over the next 20 years? The ENMU is no longer just a report to be shelved. It is a portfolio: nearly 190 medium- and high-capacity public transportation projects, including subways, light rail, bus rapid transit (BRT), and bus corridors, for the country’s 21 largest metropolitan areas, where approximately 42% of the Brazilian population lives.

That is more than 3,000 kilometers of network, of which 2,400 km are new sections — a 120% expansion over what exists today. The required investment exceeds R$430 billion (~USD 82.6 billion), but the study is unequivocal: the goal is achievable. It would suffice to increase the average annual investment by 0.15 percentage points of GDP, rising from around 0.10% to approximately 0.25%, to complete the portfolio in just over two decades.

In practical terms, as Luciene Machado, Superintendent of Project Structuring at the BNDES, explained at the study’s July launch event, this amounts to roughly R$20 billion (~USD 3.8 billion) per year — a figure perfectly comparable to other priorities already secured in the federal budget. The central point of her remarks was another, more important one: what is lacking is not the amount itself, but predictable, stable, and sufficient financing — the opposite of what the sector has today with subsidies granted in a fragmented manner and metropolitan systems operating at their limits.

This represents a real leap forward, with significant returns: a reduction of up to 15% in average travel time, the prevention of more than 27,000 traffic fatalities per year, an 11% drop in cost per trip, a 12% reduction in CO2 emissions, and an increase of up to 40% in access to jobs and services. In total, the estimated social value exceeds R$400 billion (~USD 76.9 billion), not counting the industrial impact: demand for up to 6,600 new electric buses and the creation of up to 1.3 million jobs per year during implementation. ITDP Brazil served as a key technical partner in the network of institutions that supported the ENMU, particularly in defining indicators that help consistently measure the effectiveness of mobility policies in metropolitan regions.

This role reinforces something we at ITDP believe in: good data and good indicators are part of the institutional infrastructure that underpins sound investment decisions. And this is precisely where these two July announcements converge. Having a robust portfolio of projects, with structured financing and legal certainty to attract concessions and public-private partnerships (PPPs), is a necessary — but not sufficient — condition for reversing decades of declining ridership in public transport. Increasing the number of people who choose to take the bus, the subway, and BRT is the only real path toward more resilient, fairer, and more inclusive cities.

Good infrastructure is the indispensable first step in this equation: without a network, without integration, and without traffic priority, no service is attractive enough to compete with the car. But infrastructure without a coherent subsidy policy is a house built on sand. That is why the news of the gradual phase-out of fuel subsidies should be viewed as both a positive sign and a warning. Positive because it is a step — albeit a tentative one and a reaction to external circumstances — toward ending the artificial financing of car dependence. It also serves as a warning because Brazil still lacks a unified government message about what it truly wants to prioritize.

It is simply not enough to reduce a diesel subsidy motivated by fiscal constraints and oil price volatility if, at the same time, tax exemptions and easy credit for the purchase of private vehicles, deregulation of ride-hailing services, and road infrastructure investments continue to subsidize (silently and far more generously) individual motorized transportation, cars, and, increasingly, motorcycles. For the first time in a long time, the ENMU provides us with a portfolio of projects and a plausible financing plan for public transportation.

The question that remains now is whether the Brazilian government as a whole — not just the BNDES and the Ministry of Cities, but also the Ministries of Finance, Planning, Mines and Energy, and Industry — is willing to align this path with a clear political decision: to stop subsidizing the problem to finance the solution. The funding is there; the projects are there.