Work starts on long-awaited light rail projected to connect commuter towns to Colombia’s capital, part of transport solutions at last taking shape.
It’s been a slow train coming, but after much planning, several false starts, and deferred deadlines, vital track work for the Regiotram de Occidente will now begin in Colombia’s capital in earnest.
The breakthrough came in early June with the handover of key infrastructure from the national government to Cundinamarca, the department spearheading the 40-kilometer route which by 2029 is projected to carry 130,000 people a day from the towns of Facatativá, Madrid, Mosquera and Funza, into downtown Bogotá.
Work will be done by the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) established Concesionaria Férrea de Occidente S.A.S. (CFRO) in Colombia to design, construct, and operate the Regiotram de Occidente Project.
In fact, some construction has already taken place in recent years, such as a rail hub and workshops in the Puente Aranda industrial zone of Bogotá, which will also become the base for the popular weekend ‘Turistren’, currently the capital’s only functioning train trip taking tourists to Zipaquirá.
But the hard work is still ahead: creating a two-way track that carves its way through the Cundinamarca countryside, through the sprawling barrios of Bogotá’s western perimeter, and into the congested downtown where it will link to the Transmilenio bus services and the elevated Metro, still under construction.
Track work will be slightly simplified by the route retracing an historic rail route through the city. According to the governor of Cundinamarca, Jorge Emilio Rey, the light railway will replace old tracks running across the plains west of the capital, tracks which have not held passenger trains since 1990.
“In this initial phase, old rails will be dismantled, accompanied by the relocation of service networks, excavations, and the construction of stations,” Rey announced this week.
Long overdue
Originally planned in 2020, the Regiotram was programmed for completion in 2026, but ran into red tape and budget overruns. The last hurdle, an environmental license, was swept away last year when the current Petro government – which heavily supports rail travel – scrapped the license requirement.
When complete, the train will benefit booming towns west of Bogotá which are increasingly enveloped by the capital’s conurbation but currently hampered by congestion.
For many on the western plains, the return of the train is long overdue. Passenger services ran to nearby towns for four decades until 1990, when they were scrapped partly from political pressure from road-building companies on successive governments.
Reliance on road traffic has since created huge bottlenecks for commuters across the city, but particularly for those living west of Fontibon who each day can spend up to two hours in cars and buses struggling in and out of the city via Avenida Centenario and Route 50, which is also the main truck route connecting Colombia’s capital to its second city, Medellín.
All change
Empresa Férrea Regional, the consortium behind the Regiotram, claims it will reduce this travel time by 60%, using 100-meter-long electric trains carrying up to 1,000 passengers at a time through 17 stations. The full route from the city of Facatativá to downtown will take 50 minutes with trains travelling up to 70 kilometers per hour.
The new line will follow the appropriately named Avenida Ferrocarril de Occidente (Western Railroad Avenue), where you can still see the original tracks from 40 years ago, running close to Fontibón, Modelia, Ciudad Salitre, Corferias, and Paloquemao, before terminating at Estacion Central, alongside the planned Metro station at Calle 26, in the geographic center of Bogotá close to the Tequendama Hotel.
According to plans presented by Empresa Férrea Regional, within Bogotá itself the line will bridge over major vehicle routes such as avenues Boyacá, Cali, the 68 and the main Carrera 30 highway, and stop at elevated stations to interchange with Transmilenio hubs below, similar to the new Metro. Other parts of the line will run at ground level.
The Regiotram is part of ambitious plans to shake up a region plagued by poor transport infrastructure, with Bogotá having the world’s worst traffic in 2023 and citizens losing on average 132 hours per year stuck in jams.
Other initiatives are the elevated Metro, the first line of which is scheduled for completion in 2028, and expansion of the Transmilenio bus lane network along Avenida 68.
Also slated for the next five years are urban railways extending north and south from the city to Zipaquirá, 50 kilometers to the north, and Soacha in the south, and two further Metro lines, one of which might run underground.
Getting it done
Backers of the Regiotram will be hoping the light railway creates less controversy than the Metro project, which celebrated 50% completion in May.
The Metro has been held back by planning delays and an “overground, underground” debate going back years, as covered by The Bogotá Post, and the current elevated design attracting fierce criticism by Petro who has consistently championed a more costly subterranean network.
In recent months he called plans for the elevated Metro an “urbanicide” by “destroying the urban living that’s left in the city”, and has blamed the construction for Bogotá’s congestion, particularly around Avenida Caracas, a main north-south thoroughfare, expected to last three more years.
So far for Regiotram the political runes are more positive, with Petro backing the light rail. And despite his verbal sniping, the elevated Metro is surging ahead.
When The Bogotá Post recently visited Barrio El Remanso, in the south of the city, even early on a Sunday morning huge concrete beams were being craned into place under the watchful eyes of Chinese engineers.
Two Chinese engineering companies, the China Harbour Engineering Company Limited and Xi’An Metro Company Limited are overseeing the construction under the umbrella of Colombian concession Metro Linea 1 SAS.
The elevated track had certainly transformed the urban landscape, looming over the ramshackle Avenida 1 de Mayo like an alien invader. It was unclear how the immense structure would impact life in the barrio in the long term. The few people strolling in its shadow seemed content with the Metro taking shape over their heads.
“I can’t believe it’s happening. After a lot of talking, at last we are seeing real progress,” said Efrain Urrego, walking his dog in the shadow of the cranes. “Of course, some people will complain. But we just need to get it done.”