Bogotá’s First Metro Train Is Finally Rolling

City Life

Key Facts

—The milestone. Bogotá’s first-ever metro train is now running test laps on the elevated viaduct, after decades of false starts.

—The progress. Line 1 was about 77 percent built by late April, with nine of thirty trains already delivered from China.

—The route. The line will run about twenty-four kilometres on an elevated track with sixteen stations, linking the south-west to Calle 72.

—The trains. Each fully driverless train carries up to 1,800 passengers, and ten of the sixteen stations will connect directly to TransMilenio.

—The date. Commercial service is targeted for the first quarter of 2028, with all thirty trains due to arrive during 2026.

For a city that waited more than eighty years for it, this is a genuinely historic sight. The Bogotá metro now has a real train gliding along its elevated track, and daily life in the Colombian capital is about to change.

For a foreign resident, this is the story of a promise finally being kept. Plans for a metro in Bogotá date back to the 1940s, yet Medellín, a smaller city, has run the country’s only metro since 1995.

The change came fast in 2026. According to the city government, the first train moved under its own power on the viaduct in late May, no longer towed but running on electricity.

What the Bogotá metro will actually be

Line 1 is an elevated railway of about twenty-four kilometres. It will carry passengers on a raised track roughly the height of a four-storey building, with sixteen stations running from the city’s south-west up to Calle 72.

The trains are modern and Chinese-built. Each one is fully automatic and needs no driver, carries up to eighteen hundred passengers, and even recovers part of its braking energy to feed the train ahead.

The connections are the clever part. Ten of the sixteen stations will link directly to TransMilenio, the city’s busy bus network, so a metro journey can flow into the wider system without a long walk.

The scale is already visible. By late April the project was about seventy-eight percent complete, the viaduct stretched past thirteen kilometres, and more than fifteen thousand people were working on it each day.

Why the Bogotá metro matters for residents

The prize is time. The city says the line will cut a journey that can take two hours by road down to about twenty-seven minutes, in one of the most congested capitals in the region.

There is a longer game, too. Builders have proposed extending Line 1 north to Calle 100, adding three stations and linking to a planned regional train, while a separate, fully underground Line 2 heads toward the north-west.

For newcomers, the practical read is patience with a payoff. The trains you see testing now will not carry passengers until 2028, but the network they belong to will reshape where it makes sense to live and work.

There is disruption in the meantime. Construction along avenues such as Caracas and Primero de Mayo brings detours and closures, so anyone settling in the affected corridors should budget extra time for daily trips.

The design is a source of civic pride. The trains carry the Metro de Bogotá name in bold, their shape nods to the eagle on the city’s crest, and enlarged panoramic windows are meant to make the elevated ride something residents actually enjoy.

Getting here was a long haul. The first train travelled by ship from China, completed thousands of kilometres of trials there, and must now log thousands more in Bogotá before it is cleared to carry a single passenger.

For expats weighing where to base themselves, the metro map is worth studying now. Property near future stations tends to gain value once a line opens, so today’s construction dust often marks tomorrow’s most convenient addresses.

When will the Bogotá metro open?

Commercial service on Line 1 is targeted for the first quarter of 2028. Test runs are happening now, and all thirty trains are due to arrive in the city during 2026 as construction reaches its final stages.

How will it connect to the rest of the city?

Ten of the sixteen stations will link directly to TransMilenio, the city’s bus rapid transit network. The line will also tie into planned projects, so a single trip can move between the metro, buses and a future regional train.

How fast will it be?

The city estimates the metro will cut a two-hour cross-city road trip to about twenty-seven minutes. The driverless trains run at an average commercial speed of around forty-two kilometres an hour along the elevated track.