TransMilenio is a bus rapid transit (BRT) system that serves Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, and Soacha, a neighbouring city. The system opened to the public in December 2000. As of 2022, 12 lines totalling 114.4 km (71 mi) run throughout the city.^[1] It is part of the city's Integrated Public Transport System (Sistema Integrado de Transporte Público [SITP] in Spanish), along with the urban, complementary and special bus services operating on neighbourhood and main streets.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Spanish. (September 2011) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Spanish article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 5,021 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Spanish Wikipedia article at [[:es:TransMilenio]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|es|TransMilenio}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Quick Facts Overview, Owner ...

TransMilenio
TransMilenio logo
Overview
Owner	Cities of Bogotá and Soacha
Locale	Bogotá and Soacha, Colombia
Transit type	Bus rapid transit Gondola lift (TransMiCable)
Number of lines	12[1]
Line number	Phase I Caracas Autonorte Calle 80 Caracas Sur Eje Ambiental Phase II Suba NQS Central Américas NQS Sur Phase III Calle 26 Carrera Décima Carrera Séptima
Number of stations	152[1]
Daily ridership	1.8 million (weekday 2022)[1]
Annual ridership	574.5 million (2023)[2]
Website	transmilenio.gov.co
Operation
Began operation	December 2000
Operator(s)	Consorcio Express Gmovil BMO Sur Connexion Móvil Somos K SI18 Somos Bogotá Usme
Character	At-grade street running
Number of vehicles	2364 articulated and 948 feeder buses[1]
Technical
System length	114.4 km (71 mi)[1]
System map

Close

TransMilenio consists of several interconnected BRT lines, with raised floor stations in the center of a main avenue, or "troncal". Passengers typically reach the stations via a bridge over the street. Usually four lanes down the center of the street are dedicated to bus traffic. The outer lanes allow express buses to bypass buses stopped at a station.

As of the 4th quarter of 2021, 1,759 buses on average were circulating on the trunk line system. An additional set of 800^[2] regular buses, known as "feeders" (alimentadores in Spanish), carry passengers from certain important stations to many different locations that the main route does not reach. Unlike the main TransMilenio buses, feeders operate without dedicated lanes, are not articulated and are either green or blue (regular TransMilenio buses are red). There is no additional fare to use the feeder buses.

There are 22 bicycle parking facilities in main TransMilenio stations with 6,059 parking spaces to facilitate cyclists using the system.^[1]

8 BRT corridors were certified in 2013 to meet the BRT STANDARD with excellence: Autonorte and Caracas silver, Americas, Calle 80, Eldorado, NQS and Suba gold.^[3]

TransMilenio has 12 lines serving 152 stations in the cities of Bogotá and Soacha:

• A Caracas between Calle 76 and Tercer Milenio: 14 stations
• B Autonorte between Terminal and Héroes: 17 stations
• C Suba between Portal de Suba and San Martín: 14 stations
• D Calle 80 between Portal de la 80 and Polo: 14 stations
• E NQS Central between La Castellana and Tygua - San José: 13 stations
• F Américas between Portal de Las Américas and Avenida Jiménez: 18 stations (including Ricaurte station)
• G NQS Sur between Comuneros and San Mateo: 17 stations
• H Caracas Sur between Hospital and Portal de Usme and Portal del Tunal: 16 stations
• J Eje Ambiental between Museo del Oro and Universidades: 3 stations
• K Calle 26, between Portal Eldorado and Centro Memoria: 13 stations
• L Carrera Décima between Portal 20 de Julio and San Diego: 10 stations
• M Carrera Séptima: Museo Nacional: 1 station

Instead of being numbered, routes have a combination of letters and numbers. In order to fill the information gap, TransMilenio made available an interactive guide that includes routes, stations, nearby places and route combinations.^[11]

Construction of a new line in Carrera 7 (North-Downtown) is under consideration. This has been criticized as there are certain locations where the system might not fit.

The zoning divides the trunks into 12 lines or zones that have different letters and colors. The maps changed at each station, to show the specific services to the station in question and the way to reach the other zones of the system from there.

The trunk system has three types of services:

• Regular Routes (Ruta Fácil): These are the numbered routes from 1 to 9 that stop at all stations and work all day. As of August 2008, this type of service was called the Easy Route. On June 17, 2017 these services were modified, replacing the routes that operated since 2006 by shorter trails, in addition to a change of nomenclature, which did not include the letter and the color of the destination area.
• Express (Expreso): Routes that only stop at the stations determined in their route, and are numbered from 10 to 75.
• Dual bus trunk (Troncal Bus Dual): Routes to extend the TransMilenio trunk service to arteries, beginning with the Carrera Séptima.

The fare as of 2023^[update] is 2,950 Colombian pesos for a single trip (about €0.7 or US$0.75).^[13] Cards use a contactless smart card (MIFARE) system, and multiple trips may be purchased using one card.

According to a United States Transportation Research Board (TRB) case study report, the initial construction cost for the first phase of 41 km was US $240 million, or US $5.9 million/km. In a report presented later by the Ministry of Transport of Colombia, the total cost of the construction of Transmilenio phase one was estimated at 1.4 billion COP (about US$703 million), of which 253.053 million COP (about US$126.5 million) was provided by the Colombian government. The construction of the phase two was estimated at 3.2 billion COP (about US$1634 million), of which 2.1 billion COP (about US$1058 million) was provided by the Colombian government and the rest was provided by the city. The numbers of this report are calculated in money of 2009.^[16]

The system is overseen by a public body, which awards contracts to private bus companies on a competitive basis. According to TRB, private contractors are paid based on the total number of kilometers that their vehicles operate.^[17]

Daily ridership quickly reached 800,000 after the system opened. TransMilenio has since been expanded. Ridership in early 2006 was 1,050,000 daily, in 2009 it was 1,400,000 daily and in September 2018 it was 2.4 million on a weekday.^[1]

Other cities are building systems modelled on Transmilenio, for example, Mexico City,^[18] and Transantiago in Santiago, Chile, but the difference is that in these cities the system is complemented with a Rapid transit system.

In 2016, Transmilenio had an 86% disapproval rating from users.^[19] User strikes erupted over bad service quality, with users blocking bus lanes and at times halting the entire system.^[20] These protests sometimes devolved into riots involving heavy police presence and the use of crowd control measures such as tear gas and water cannons.^[21]

The system was described by users, independent bodies and the media as suffering from overcrowding with an average of eight passengers per square meter,^[22][23] insecurity^[24][25] and providing bad customer service. During rush hours, "stations are so packed that people can't get off the bus". In some stations the overcrowding was so severe that users had to wait in a long line to top up the Smart card and in another line to enter the station.^[26] According to official data in 2017, there were 3404 thefts in TransMilenio stations and 1442 more on buses.^[27]

The bad image and quality of the system caused an increase in the number of cars and motorcycles in the city. Citizens preferred these means of transport over the TransMilenio. According to official data, the number of cars increased from approximately 666,000 in 2005 to 1,586,700 in 2016; the number of motorcycles also grew. 660,000 were sold in Bogota in 2013, twice the number of cars sold.^[28]

During construction there were problems with the concrete used to pave the dedicated roads, which had an estimated cost to the city of 1.6 trillion pesos (500 million dollars). In 2012 Bogota's secretary of finance said that the whole line of Avenida Caracas should be rebuilt as well as some parts of the Avenida 26 line.^[29]

At the end of 2018 Transmilenio ordered 1383 new buses as a replacement of the older ones in service. 52% were compressed natural gas (CNG) buses made by Scania with Euro 6 emission rating, 48% were diesel engine made by Volvo with Euro 5 emission rating. More orders have produced an impressive result: "To improve public and environmental health, the City of Bogotá has assembled a fleet of 1,485 electric buses for its public transportation system—placing the city among the three largest e-bus fleets outside of China."^[45][46]

• List of bus rapid transit systems
• TransMiCable
• Transjakarta