Abstract

For the past two decades, Rio de Janeiro has justified bidding to host sports mega-events based on the promises of creating a lasting infrastructure legacy for local communities and overcome its persistent transportation and social problems. This chapter investigates the social and distributional impacts of the transport legacy of the 2014 Football World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. It examines who benefited from Rio’s transport legacy, looking at how recent transport policies implemented in the city have impacted accessibility to jobs, schools and healthcare facilities by public transport for people of different income levels. The results show that the potential accessibility gains from the transport legacy in Rio were generally offset by a reduction in bus service levels and that, contrary to the official discourse, this legacy has exacerbated rather than reduced socio-spatial inequalities in access to opportunities..