The winning consortium was announced in the tender for the Bogota Metro concession. China Harbor Engineering Company Limited and Xi'an Metro Company Limited, members of APCA Transmimetro consortium will carry out the detailed designs, build, operate and perform maintenance of Bogota´s first metro.

The contract award was expected to be announced on Monday 21 of October, but the city, in an unprecedented decision on Wednesday night on 16 of October awarded the contract for the city´s first metro line to the Chinese firm. Engineering Company Limited holds 85% in the company and Xi'an Metro Company Limited - 15%.

The companies of the winning consortium between them have experience in the construction of the urban metro in China, and multiple naval and recovery engineering projects, roads and bridges, railways, airports, real estate development projects, import and export of goods and technology businesses. The competing final bidder was the Mexican-Spanish Bogota Metro Consortium composed of FCC Concessions and Infrastructure, Carso Infraestructura y Construcción, Alstom, Metropolitan Railway of Barcelona and Promoter of the Development of Latin America.

The evaluation of the two consortia took into account the prices of the offers. APCA Transmimetro Chinese consortium obtained the highest score in all the factors evaluated, achieving 100 points. The Bogota Metro Consortium obtained a total of 94.54 points.

The contract indicates that a preoperative stage of the concession will last 2,700 calendar days. The operation and maintenance stage has a term of 20 years. Then there will be the reversal stage, which has a maximum term of six months. The estimated duration of all stages of the project is 27.9 years.

Bogota´s first subway line will be 23.96 kilometers long at feature 16 stations. It will operate 23 trains and will have a capacity for 72,000 passengers every hour per direction.

The works are planned to begin in April 2020 and the subway is expected to be ready and operational in 2025.

The official announcement of the award will take place on Tuesday, October 22.