until around the 60s, until a bunch of car factories moved in and started pressuring the government to not only invest more on roads, but to abandon passenger trains altogether as an “incentive” for people to buy cars.
Is there any connection to the military dictatorship here?
Yes, actually. It was used to force the neoliberal ‘experiment’ onto the population, same as what happened in Chile and in other Latin American countries. Also, a lot of the supporters of the regime, as well as the upper echelons, were composed of capitalists. It’s a textbook example of fascists and the bourgeoisie working together to suppress leftist movements and force unpopular economic policies.
This article talks about it in more depth, but it’s in portuguese: https://app.uff.br/riuff/handle/1/24398
