Petro looking to focus on cable car lines, railroads, electric buses

The government of Colombian President Gustavo Petro is looking to support the development of public transport infrastructure with cable car and rail lines.

"The president has insisted that we're going to change gasoline for clean energy and buses for rail systems, trams and cable cars," transport minister Guillermo Reyes said.

By way of example, a third cable car line in the city of Manizales will soon be operating, the official said during a visit to the city, the capital of Caldas department, along with Petro.

According to the minister, before the end of this year, the government will have have drafted a policy to enable that allows a fourth cable car line to strengthen the local network, which will be part of a multimodal and integrated transport system that will also include bike lanes, electric buses and 24km of strategic corridors.

Reyes also said that one of the pillars of the work of national highway authority (Invías) will be to improve tertiary roads or local roads, since it is estimated that these cover some 200,000km across the country.

These roads should also be connected with fiber optics under a program that will be carried out jointly by the transport ministry and the information and communication technology ministry (Mintic).