In July 2026, the last wall fell beneath Lima: all 27 kilometers of Line 2's twin tunnels are now bored, bringing a 45-minute Ate-to-Callao metro — with an airport branch — within sight for a city that waited four decades for its first line.
Peru's first fully underground metro is the largest urban mobility project in the country's history: 35 kilometers of tunnels, 35 stations and two depots, built by a Webuild-led consortium under a $5 billion-plus concession signed in 2014. Two ten-meter boring machines spent a decade beneath one of Latin America's densest cities; the final breakthrough came in July 2026, with construction past 80% and track-laying under way.
When it opens, the line crosses the city east to west in about 45 minutes — a trip that can take two hours and forty-five minutes on the surface — linking Ate to Callao, the historic center, and via the Line 4 branch along Avenida Faucett, Jorge Chávez Airport itself. A five-station appetizer in Santa Anita has run since December 2023; the full line targets the end of the decade and 2.5 million beneficiaries.
What Lima has today is Line 1: 34.6 kilometers of elevated viaduct — the longest in Latin America — running 26 stations from Villa El Salvador in the south to San Juan de Lurigancho in the northeast, for S/2.50 with a S/5 rechargeable card. It is useful for visitors exactly where it overlaps the south: Surco, San Borja, La Victoria and the edge of the historic center at Grau station; a $3.9 billion modernization promises 90 trains and 90-second headways.
And there is one more rail experience, in a category of its own: the Ferrocarril Central Andino, the tourist train from Lima to Huancayo that climbs the Andes to 4,782 meters — among the highest railways on Earth — across 58 bridges and 69 tunnels. It runs only a few times a year and sells out instantly; if your dates align, it is the rail journey of the continent.
Our read: ride Line 1 once, for the viaduct view of a city most visitors see only from the coastal third — but build your days on the Metropolitano and taxis until Line 2 opens. The airport branch is the project to watch: the day the metro reaches Jorge Chávez, Lima's single worst visitor experience — the airport transfer — is solved. If the Huancayo train falls inside your window, cancel whatever conflicts; it runs too rarely to plan around.
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