There is no metro that has been written about more than that of Bogotá.
A transport that does not even exist but that has been in the city's plans for eight decades.
The suburban is like a stab at the pride of Bogota residents, who feel it is a disgrace to be one of the few large cities in the world that does not have mass public transportation.
Even now, that the works are already underway, the issue has ceased to be controversial.
The national government and the successive mayors of the capital have been engaged for years in a continuous battle over the great infrastructure work of Bogotá for the next decade, a system that could change the mobility of a city of eight million inhabitants that each year gains the first place as the city with the worst traffic in the world.
Carlos Fernando Galán, mayor of Bogotá since January 1, has already run out of grace.
The Government of Gustavo Petro has begun to put pressure on works that the current councilor has promised to continue as his predecessor, Claudia López, began.
The fights between the former mayor and the president over the subway during the last legislature were memorable and, although Galán still maintains his conciliatory tone, they threaten to be repeated.
The subway is a bone that Petro is not willing to let go, obsessed with the project being underground and not elevated, as is being built.
Last Sunday, the Ministers of Transportation and Finance made a flyover, duly broadcast on social networks, over the works in the capital to verify their status.
On Twitter, the person in charge of the Treasury, Ricardo Bonilla, dropped the warning: “Congress approves global items, and within those items, the priorities are discussed, evaluating the actual execution of the projects.”
He came to say that the money for the project – which the national State assumes 70% – was not insured.
Galán reacted with temperance and acknowledged a “slight” delay, but recalled that “the contributions of the Nation are not linked to the progress of the work.”
The tug of war continued on Monday on the Twitter profile of the Bogotá Metro company—which, even though it does not yet exist in real life, has more than 153,000 followers in the virtual world.
In a message he proudly celebrated the construction of the first two columns of the works with their respective image, without mentioning that there are still another 700 to be done.
There were citizens who took the announcement with humor, which gave rise to memes and even some proposals to declare the holiday in the face of such a milestone.
Galán insisted hours later: “The subway is moving!”, a phrase that his predecessor made famous.
Behind the transportation that Bogota residents still do not have, there is a political problem due to the ownership of a project that everyone wants to take on.
The plan began to take shape a decade ago.
Then, today's President Petro was mayor.
The leader of the left managed to make great progress in planning an underground metro and even agreed with the then president Juan Manuel Santos on a national contribution of 70% of the budget.
But his mandate ended before it became a reality.
His successor, Enrique Peñalosa, designed an elevated subway in his place and put the project out to tender, a competition that Apca Transmimetro, a Chinese consortium, won.
When López became mayor in 2020, he continued the contract and work began.
Two years later, Petro assumed the Presidency and put on the table recovering his initial plan: an underground subway.
López was categorically opposed to paralyzing a project that was already underway and the war with the president since then was fierce.
Petro never gave in and months ago requested a study, which cost 8,000 million pesos, to evaluate all the options.
The result of the report was not known until this Monday, although in a diffuse manner, since it has not yet been made public in full, despite the fact that it was delivered to the Government two months ago.
The Colombian Society of Engineers (SCI) - in charge of the study - appeared before the Senate and the words of its spokesperson sounded evasive: "We were not hired to give a recommendation on what kind of metro should be built."
That was supposedly the president's trick to stop the current project and bury part of the first line, which is what is underway, but it seems that the results do not sufficiently support his thesis.
The engineers threw the ball out: “We did academic exercises, you can't make a decision with that.”
The debate, however, promises to continue and now the pressure has moved to the economic issue, in which the Government has the power.
The mega-project has a cost of 22.3 trillion pesos (5.4 billion dollars) and the metro is expected to come into operation in 2028. In this year's national budget, 776,139 million pesos should be allocated to the works, but the The item is not yet closed and the ministers are playing with ambiguity about the final amount.
The president, who does not miss the opportunity to address the issue, did not refer to the subway this Monday.
He limited himself to retweeting a message from another user so forceful that it ends with: “What a blatant robbery they did to Bogotá Peñalosa, Claudia and Galán.”
The newly arrived mayor, convalescing from an appendicitis operation, is already part of this eternal battle.
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