Brazil’s interim president, Michel Temer, presided over the Saturday opening of the last major infrastructure project to be finished for the Olympics, the much-delayed extension of a metro line completed just six days before the event begins.
The 10bn real ($3.1bn) expansion of the metro from Rio’s Ipanema neighbourhood to Barra, the area housing the Olympic park and village, is key to the smooth transport of fans and athletes between the games’ different competition zones.
The metro can only be used by athletes and delegation members, fans with tickets for events the day they travel, and others with Olympic credentials through the Games.
It will open to the public September 19, the day after the close of the Paralympics.
At the ceremony marking the opening of the metro on Saturday, Temer told reporters he hoped the Games would help unite a bitterly divided Brazil, which is facing political and economic crises, and has suffered repeated stumbles in its run-up to hosting the world’s biggest sporting event — including having less than a week to test the extended metro’s operations.
Temer is widely expected to officially take over the presidency just days after the Olympics end on August 21.
Suspended President Dilma Rousseff is facing an impeachment trial over alleged budget irregularities, and the Senate is expected to vote against her the last week of August.
Temer would then take over until elections in 2018.
Polls show he is as disliked as Rousseff, with approval ratings in the single digits.
The last-minute completion of the 16km metro extension, which was first planned in 1998 but repeatedly delayed, was not the only challenge the project has faced: Federal investigators are probing its construction for possible corruption.
The consortium that expanded the metro is led by Queiroz Galvao and Odebrecht Infraestrutura — two firms caught up in Brazil’s biggest corruption scandal yet uncovered, a sprawling kickback scheme at state-run oil company Petrobras.
Still, the metro is expected to improve Rio’s increasingly congested traffic.
The expanded metro is forecast to carry an additional 300,000 passengers per day, according to a recent study from the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a top Brazilian think tank and business school.

Temer says he’s ready to be booed at the Olympics

Brazil’s interim president Michel Temer said Saturday he is fine with the likelihood he will be booed when he appears at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games next week.
“I am totally ready. As (Brazilian writer) Nelson Rodrigues used to say, in Maracana (stadium) even the moment of silence gets booed,” Temer told local media on a visit to Porto Alegre, ahead of South America’s first Olympics, which he will open at the fabled football pitch.
Temer, the vice president who has been acting head of state since May, will preside over the opening ceremony and declare the Games open, amid the country’ contentious political situation.
Suspended president Dilma Rousseff and her predecessor and left-wing ally Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, meanwhile, have said they will boycott the ceremony.
Rousseff is currently suspended for an impeachment trial for breaking government budget laws, while Lula, who as president was instrumental in Rio’s winning bid as Olympic host, faces serious corruption allegations.
“I have to fulfil my institutional responsibilities. And I also understand the ex-presidents are not going to be in attendance. So the fun part is they can save all the boos just for the president,” Temer quipped.