The Alto Tietê Lot includes, among other investments in São Paulo’s passenger rail network, the extension of Line 11-Coral to César de Sousa, a district in Mogi das Cruzes. This project represents a long-time dream of the local population and has the potential to spur growth and development in the area.
José Cláudio Louzada, a resident of the district, has been awaiting the station’s arrival for over a decade. He even says it was this expectation that led him to choose the district: “When I talk to friends or neighbors, they don’t understand why I moved here. But when I moved to Mogi in 2008, there was already talk of the train reaching César.”
Now retired, José Cláudio uses Line 11-Coral to do odd jobs or visit family. To access the line, however, he needs to take a bus to Estudantes station, the last stop on the line. “Here in César de Sousa, buses run every 20 minutes. But around 6 PM, a bus from Estudantes to César de Sousa can take up to 40 minutes to reach my place.”
José Cláudio believes that a station in César de Sousa could help improve traffic throughout Mogi das Cruzes. “The traffic flow on João XXIII and Francisco Rodrigues Filho Avenues [which connect downtown Mogi to the district] is complicated because a lot of people choose to drive to the city center or the train stations,” he explains. “There’s a heavy flow of people going to Estudantes in the morning and returning late, coming from César or Vila Suíssa, and everyone ends up at Estudantes, causing that traffic jam at the Habib’s square,” he adds.
To extend Line 11-Coral to César de Sousa, four more kilometers of permanent rail track will be built within the right-of-way currently used by MRS Logística for freight transport. The new station is planned for the same location where the old César de Souza stop on the former Central do Brasil Railway once operated.
José Cláudio also hopes the station will help the César de Sousa district grow. “I think having the station in César de Sousa would help the neighborhood’s economic growth, because people come here to look at real estate, and having a station would be an extra incentive for them to settle here,” he says. The area is already seeing real estate developments with prices above R$ 7,900 per square meter, similar to those in Vila Andrade, near Morumbi, according to the FipeZAP Index.