Another Lerner innovation was to organize the street vendors into a mobile, open-air fair that circulates through the city's neighborhoods. Concentric circles of local bus lines connect to five lines that radiate from the center of the city in a spider web pattern. On the radial lines, triple-compartment buses in their own traffic lanes carry three hundred passengers each. They go as fast as subway cars, but at one-eightieth the construction cost. The buses stop at Plexiglas tube stations designed by Lerner.
Passengers pay their fares, enter through one end of the tube, and exit from the other end.
This system eliminates paying on board, and allows faster loading and unloading, less idling and air pollution, and a sheltered place for waiting - though the system is so efficient that there isn't much waiting. There isn't much littering either. There isn't time. Curitiba's citizens separate their trash into just two categories, organic and inorganic, for pick-up by two kinds of trucks. Poor families in squatter settlements that are unreachable by trucks bring their trash bags to neighborhood centers, where they can exchange them for bus tickets or for eggs, milk, oranges and potatoes, all bought from outlying farms.