After 70 years of setbacks, the Bogotá Metro is finally beginning to take shape. Last September, it secured partial state funding for its construction, and in April, the 16 stations of the first line were presented. Consequently, building a new transit system for a city of 8 million people has sparked widespread debate, capturing the attention of residents who long for a project that would solve one of the major mobility crises currently facing the Colombian capital.
Darío Hidalgo, director of integrated transport at the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, and Carlos Carrillo, an industrial designer from the National University of Colombia, recently participated in the Observatorio de Gobierno Urbano program on UN Radio, where they compared the routes and costs of an elevated metro versus an underground one.
Mobility reform is reflected in the opportunity the Metro represents for the city, regardless of whether it is elevated or underground, Hidalgo noted, while acknowledging that “an elevated metro can impact the urban surroundings and may entail higher construction costs and risks, which is why evaluations of alternatives must be conducted.”
According to Hidalgo, this was one of the reasons why the underground proposal was questioned in 2015 when seeking support from the national government. At the time, there was no alternative assessment and the project faced serious technical issues, leading the government to delay its CONPES decision and ultimately disrupting the project's continuity.
"The best option for Bogotá is an underground metro," Professor Carlos Carrillo began, though he acknowledged that almost all transit systems worldwide have some elevated sections. Carrillo warned that the Bogotá administration claimed at the time—"without any basis," according to the academic—that “the cost of building one kilometer of underground metro could build 1.48 kilometers of elevated track, shifting the project from an original 27 kilometers to just 19.5 operational kilometers,” the professor pointed out.
"Why are we building less metro? What technical assessment did the city's current mayor use during his campaign to halt the project? Was there none?" questioned the UN industrial designer.
Hidalgo, on the other hand, responded that "the national government did indeed require technical studies; there were two: one by the French transport consultant (Systra) and the study conducted by Deloitte, to review the alternatives from a technical standpoint." He also noted that during the transition of administrations (between Gustavo Petro and Enrique Peñalosa), the possibility of incorporating elevated sections was raised to reduce costs and risks, alternatives proposed based on recommendations from engineering studies.
Hidalgo further stated that there were indeed two alternatives, and in both cases, the elevated route proved socioeconomically superior, despite its potential urban impacts. Ultimately, this latter route is the one the National Government decided to support—a milestone that historically has been extremely difficult to reach.
"The problem is that decisions here are not made on technical grounds, but for political reasons," Carrillo argued, adding that this decision has been drawn out for decades in Bogotá, while other Latin American cities continue to build new transit lines.
Via Noticias IEU, El Tiempo.
This article was written by Yamid Rivera. The translation is powered by AI.
