In recent days, a controversy has erupted around the Ciudad de Cali avenue project in southern Bogotá. Representative Daniel Briceño stated, after the delivery of one of the four groups that make up the trunk line, that the District lied about the project’s commissioning.
The congressman affirmed that “thousands of citizens know and understand that Ciudad de Cali avenue is an absolute disaster. It is a wasted and abandoned work, which today has an absolutely expensive solution.”
In response to the criticisms, the director of the Urban Development Institute (IDU), Orlando Molano, accompanied by the community, stepped in to clarify the situation of each construction front and the measures adopted to speed up this 7.4-kilometer trunk line that has four independent contracts.
The representative’s reaction came after Mayor Carlos Fernando Galán commissioned group 1 of the project last Wednesday — which covers 2.85 km between Tibanica and Bosa avenue —.
After years of delays, the sector was put into operation with three new TransMilenio stations and a fleet of 50 electric buses unique in the world that connect Bosa and Kennedy with the rest of the city.
“Mayor Galán sold the lie to the public that we were inaugurating a trunk line. All the works we see abandoned should have been delivered years ago. Section 1, which is the one the mayor showed in his video inaugurating it, had already been delivered in 2024,” said Briceño.
Representative @Danielbricen, political oversight is welcome, but some clarifications are necessary: this Administration has been in charge of the Ciudad de Cali avenue trunk line, with permanent monitoring and actions to accelerate its execution.
— IDU Bogotá (@idubogota) August 23, 2026
In January 2024 we received… pic.twitter.com/SnvBgDBl40
Regarding group 1, Molano explained that when they took office in 2024, they received it with a 72 percent progress and finished it that same year.
“We couldn’t commission it because the other stations were missing. Today, it is already delivered,” said the director.
The Tibanica-Primavera, Los Laureles, and Islandia stations have already been commissioned, and since last week the F63 – Z63 service is operating, connecting with the Las Américas trunk line, and the A61 – Z61 service, which takes users to Polo station in northern Bogotá.
According to the first estimates from the Mayor’s Office, there is a reduction in travel time of about 30 minutes for the 3,000 users who move through the sector during peak hours, which comprehensively improves the connectivity of the Bosa locality.
In addition to the TransMilenio service, group 1 has 19,700 m² of new public space, more than 5,900 m² of green areas, and 1,700 m² of landscaping.
Additionally, it included 1.51 kilometers of segregated bike lane, sidewalks, and 319 m² of urban spaces, including calisthenics gym areas and murals with Bogotá’s flora and fauna made by the Bosa Boys collective.
However, the harshest criticisms from Representative Briceño were for group 2 of the Cali. This section, which goes from Bosa avenue to Villavicencio avenue, should have been delivered in 2023, but due to contractor breaches it stalled and remained at 50 percent progress.
The construction was in charge of the Santamaría 004 consortium, made up of the companies Alca Ingeniería and Castro Tcherassi.
Irregularities were constant, and the IDU held 19 meetings with the consortium to review, adjust the schedule, and seek progress in execution.
However, after repeated failures for practically abandoning the work, on May 9, 2025, the IDU declared the contract terminated, imposed a penalty clause of 14,698 million pesos on the contractor, and ordered its termination and liquidation.
“The Galán administration, alleging some breaches by the contractor, unilaterally terminated the contract and did not seek a more responsible solution for Bogotá. That IDU decision caused the work to be completely abandoned and without any functionality,” Briceño pointed out.
The District assured that all instances were exhausted with the contractor before terminating the contract. “We tried to work with them, offered contingency plans, but they did not meet the deadlines and did not pay workers or suppliers. The contractor only advanced 4 percent in a year and a half, so we applied administrative mechanisms, sanctions, and fines,” explained Orlando Molano.
After the District took possession of the work, a new tender will be opened to find a contractor willing to take over the project.
This includes the construction of a pedestrian bridge, three TransMilenio stations, three bike stations, 84,805 m² of public space, 34,707 m² of green areas, 2.45 km of bike lane, two lanes for mixed traffic, and two exclusive lanes per direction.
According to Molano, a six-month pre-construction phase would begin, and official works would start in 2027 to then be commissioned in 2028 and connect with the rest of the trunk line.
As for the remaining fronts, group 3 is 98 percent complete and will be ready to be delivered in a couple of months when the Patio Bonito station is finished.
Group 4 has reached 86 percent progress and only the first floor of the Cali roundabout with Américas remains to be completed to be delivered in December this year.
“Representative, you say I don’t face the people. Throughout the entire work, I was directly with the community, and our interest is to defend the resources of the people of Bogotá,” said the IDU director, surrounded by leaders from Bosa and Kennedy.
NICOLÁS DÍAZ MALPICA
Bogotá Editorial
