Colombia’s capital Bogota will have its first metro line in 2018, Mayor Gustavo Petro said Tuesday on announcing that the construction of the mass transit system is expected to begin in 2015.
Petro said so when publicly signing the official beginning of a technical study of the project that will be paid for by both the city and the national government.
According to Petro, the signing “marks point zero for us to begin constructing the metro in 15 months. For now, with this signature, we will begin digging the first holes which will end once the first citizen boards a car of the Bogota Metro.”
The Bogota government plans that the last studies before construction will be finished by September 2014 after which the capital immediately hopes to proceed with the construction of the tunnel.
The 17-mile underground metro line will begin at the current Transmilenio station Las Americas from where it will go downtown and then northward along the 11th until reaching 127th street in the north of the capital.
Planned route of Bogota’s Metro line 1
The metro line connecting both the east and the north to the downtown area is planned to have 28 stations. The exact locations of these stations are yet to be defined. Additionally, the city government said the route of the metro might change depending on the results of the study.
If all goes well, some 40 trains will be running the tracks at 20mph by the end of 2018.
Until now, the only city in Colombia with a metro is Medellin, which constructed the first line of an above-ground metro system in 1995.
Plans to construct a metro in Bogota have been on the table for years, but were delayed by corruption scandals.