At the end of 1989, exclusive lanes for public transportation were built on one of Bogotá's main roads, Avenida Caracas, as a first effort to structure public transportation and improve mobility. This project displaced from that road corridor the "Trolleybus of Bogota" which was a transport system powered by electricity that was in service between 1947 and 1991, which had many failures in the supply of energy, causing delays in its service and congestion in the roads when it was stranded in the middle of the road.
Later, at the beginning of the millennium, the TransMilenio System concept was developed in Bogota, a worldwide benchmark for a BRT, which is a mass transportation project that included the construction of specific infrastructure such as exclusive lanes for high-capacity buses, passenger stations and portals, specialized yards and workshops, as well as sidewalks and plazas designed to facilitate the use of the system by users.
In addition, a trunk operation was designed with articulated buses and feeding at the portals, all under the responsibility of a "Management Entity" responsible for coordinating the different actors, planning, managing and controlling the operation and provision of the public urban mass passenger transport service. Along with the improvement of the transportation system, importance was also given to cyclists and pedestrians with the incorporation of wide sidewalks, avenues and bike paths, which began to change the way of moving around the city. An example of this change was the construction of the Transmilenio Calle 13 and Américas trunk lines, where I had the privilege of participating in their construction.
The next step for the organization of public transport in the city and to have a more organized multimodal transport was the creation and implementation of the Integrated Public Transport System - SITP, which aimed to integrate, reduce and modernize the fleet and the number of companies providing transport services in the city, improve the working conditions of drivers, as well as the articulation, linkage and integrated operation of the different modes of public transport trunk and zone, the system began to operate with many difficulties gradually until its full implementation today.
The third element within multimodal transportation in Bogotá is the operation of the TransMiCable, a system that connects the locality of Ciudad Bolívar in the Mirador and El Paraíso sectors in only 13 minutes with the TransMilenio El Tunal Portal, a route that previously could take up to 50 minutes. Currently, Bogota already has another cable under construction and at Egis we developed the prefeasibility and feasibility studies for the third cable that will connect the Portal del Sur with the Potosi sector in Ciudad Bolivar, which will additionally benefit the neighboring city of Soacha; in parallel we are advancing in the designs of two other cables in the districts of Santafe and Candelaria in the historic center of the city.
We have a long history of railways, especially studies, however, concrete projects are already being developed after more than half a century with the construction of the first Metro Line in Bogota, and the construction of the first commuter train in Colombia, Regiotram de Occidente, which will connect the western savannah of Bogota with the city center, by means of a fast and modern tramway. In addition to these projects, the second Bogotá subway line, the Regiotram Norte project and the third subway line that will connect Bogotá with the city of Soacha, projects that are already progressing in their studies and designs and will soon be contracting the detailed designs and construction.
