Feature: Colombian city celebrates 20 years of metro system

Colombia's Medellin celebrated on Monday the 20th anniversary of its metro system that make locals proud of the city they call home, as it is the first and only city in Colombia to have a fast, efficient and sustainable massive transportation system.

The Medellin Metro was first opened on Nov. 30, 1995, after 15 years of poor planning and low budget which created an over cost of nearly 100 percent of the initial budget assigned by the city hall.

The massive transportation is characterized to be on and above the ground, since underground was not possible due to the type of land and budget.

Now, its modern trains travel the length of 34.5 km at an average speed of 40 km/h, with a maximum of 80 km/h. Medellin people make an efficient use of its 27 stations that are strategically located in a north-south route through the Aburra Valley.

The Metro was a pressing need after many of its urban transport companies closed, and the then city mayor Jorge Valencia Jaramillo started the idea in 1978.

Once the river Medellin was channelized with concrete walls to avoid floods and enable a better urban planning, the idea of the Metro did not wait until it was conducted by the authorities.

The city was struggling in the high violence levels caused by organized criminal gangs and drug cartels.

The National Council for Economic and Social Policy approved the project in December 1982 that enabled the Metro de Medellin company to fund the 100 percent of the project.

The German-Hispanic Metromed company was awarded to build the metro in 1983, but it took a year for the city hall to authorize the beginning of the project.

According to local media, the first train was put into use on Nov. 30, 1995, which ran between the stations of Niquia and Poblado on line A.

Its success made possible the enlargement of the lines, and before long line B was put into service on Feb. 28, 1996, connecting downtown Medellin with the western area of the city (San Antonio).

Many years later, the city hall decided to build a cable car system fully contacted to the metro, in an effort to integrate poor neighborhoods of the city on the mountain and to enforce a better control on the "comunas" or slums.

The cable car is now the line K, opened on July 30, 2004, with funds of the French Cooperation Agency for Development that loaned Medellin city hall 250 million U.S. dollars with cable cars and trolleys in order to connect some 300,000 marginalized inhabitants.

Meanwhile, the Colombian capital city of Bogota is studying the possibility of building a metro system like Medellin, which will help solve its traffic jams and relieve pressures on its public transport system. Endi