Andrés Escobar, the engineer who carries the construction of the Bogotá Metro on his shoulders

The subway that has not carried a meter for more than 70 years in the Colombian capital is finally a fact. This mega-project that will significantly benefit hundreds of Bogota citizens is attributed to the governments of Juan Manuel Santos, Iván Duque, Enrique Peñalosa and Claudia López. However, the Colombian who ‘carries’ the Bogotá Metro is the civil engineer Andrés Escobar Uribe, 35, who will have to take on the challenges of one of the most anticipated and controversial works of the last century in Colombia.

In dialogue with the newspaper El Tiempo, Escobar Uribe said that he has been linked to the Bogotá Metro since Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of the capital, told him that in Colombia there were no people who knew how to do meters and due to the extensive experience that this individual had, he gave him the spokesperson and management of the metro.

Escobar says that many people do not like challenges, but he does and despite the fact that there were not many studies and he had to rethink the layout and designs of the subway, he decided to ‘put on the 10’ and direct this project that will finally begin brick on brick.

The manager of the Metro company explains that together with the multidisciplinary team with which he worked on this project, they hired a consulting firm and the National Development Finance Office that served to “prioritize the elevated line to Los Héroes, up to 76, and the feeder trunk lines, because it was the only way for the benefit-cost ratio to be positive, “Escobar said.

When asking the manager of this project if it has been a demanding process, Escobar Uribe assures that they have been years of intense work and “wear and tear.” He says that the project had to go through various governmental and rigorous entities such as the Bogotá Council, debts with the World Bank, the Presidency, the Mayor’s Office, among others. In addition, he mentions that because of the concern of the project he sometimes could not sleep, but that everything has been worth it.

The Bogotá Metro has had multiple obstacles in the different district and national administrations. Faced with these inconveniences, Escobar Uribe says that he felt fear when he saw that the debt that the nation would have to acquire for more than 2.4 trillion pesos to sign the initial act made him think that “we were not going to be able to make that issue and We were going to be left without completing the financing ”.

Another of the ‘chicharrones’ that the manager of the Metro company had to assume was the decision that the metro project be carried out through a concession. According to Escobar, this situation caused him to have a friction with the former mayor Peñalosa because “When we say that the contracting modality was going to be a concession, that was very bad news for some subway builders, because what some like is ‘I won the contract, I do work, they pay me and I go’. In a concession you do the work and stay operating, and if things do not work, you are responsible and you will not receive payment “, he told the newspaper El Tiempo.

It also says that in the face of this decision, public opinion did not wait and many ambassadors and those involved in the project ‘got off the subway’ and decided not to continue because they claimed that the decision was “a serious mistake.” “We had very difficult nights, with a lot of tension. And outside of that we had macroeconomic problems, devaluations, “he says.

The presidential and district elections had a significant impact on the decline in the metro. According to Escobar, in the 2019 electoral contest, there was a candidate who accused those who led the Metro company of corruption; however, everything went well because “fortunately, that did not end in anything and Claudia López clarified all that,” he said.

There are approximately eight years to go before the Colombian capital can finally have the metro, the challenges are great and the obstacles more. However, the manager of said project says that much remains to be done and “we are responsible for paying huge sums, on the order of 10 billion pesos, in these eight years. That comes ahead ”, concluded Escobar Uribe.