In May 2026, Bogotá's first metro train moved under its own power on the elevated track — 24 kilometers, 16 stations, fully driverless — while the RegioTram to the western savanna builds toward 130,000 riders a day and the weekend steam train still climbs to the Salt Cathedral.
Bogotá planned a metro in the 1940s and watched Medellín open Colombia's only one in 1995; the debt is now being paid in concrete. Line 1 runs 24 kilometers on a viaduct the height of a four-story building, from Bosa in the southwest to Calle 72 — sixteen stations, ten of them interchanging directly with TransMilenio, driverless GoA4 trains at 90-second intervals carrying 1,800 passengers each.
The numbers behind the ribbon: about 82% built as of September 2026, the first Chinese-built train self-propelled on the viaduct since May 2026, commercial service targeted for Q1 2028, and a projected million passengers a day — cutting the cross-city journey from two road hours to 27 minutes. An extension to Calle 100 and a fully underground Line 2 are already in design.
West of the city, the RegioTram de Occidente is rebuilding the old Savannah Railway as a 40-kilometer electric tram-train to Facatativá — 17 stations, trains for 1,000 passengers, end-to-end in 50 minutes — with construction under a Chinese-led concession that broke ground in June 2025 and first trains due in early 2027. The northern line to Zipaquirá, a $4.5 billion, 48-kilometer project, went to tender in 2026 for a 2034 opening.
Until those arrive, Bogotá's only passenger train is also its most charming: the Turistren, the weekend heritage service from the old Sabana station — steam on some departures — that rattles 48 kilometers north through the savanna to Zipaquirá and its underground Salt Cathedral. It is slow, sells out, and is exactly the right way to do the region's most popular day trip.
Our read: don't plan a 2026–27 trip around the metro — plan a 2028 one around it; the day it opens, staying near a station becomes the Bogotá trick. Until then, the one train every visitor should ride is the Turistren to Zipaquirá: book it the week you book flights, take the morning departure, and pair the Salt Cathedral with lunch in the town square. The RegioTram is the one to watch for 2028 too — it will make the western coffee-country foothills a half-day, not a day, from the center.
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