Transmetro

• January 1999: Mayor Fritz Garcia Gallont offers to implement the Transmetro project, unfortunately it doesn't happen within his administration.
• January 2004: Alvaro Arzu, after being elected as mayor for a second term, confirmed that he considered the Transmetro as a solution to alleviate congestion in the city.
• June 2004: The city council says the first phase would be completed by the end of the year.
• December 2004: City council announces that they would push the opening date to late 2005.
• June 2006: City council pledges to do its best effort to complete phase 1 by the end of the year.
• December 2006: The opening date is pushed to January 2007.
• January 2007: Due to delays in completing from infrastructure, the opening date is pushed by one month to February 2007.
• February 3, 2007: Phase one, renamed "Eje Sur" (South line), begins operating in the city.
• August 14, 2010: The second phase opens, renamed "Eje central" also known as "Corredor Central" (Central line, or also known as Central corridor).[2]
• December 2012: A short line begins to operate in the Historic Downtown aka "Centro Historico"
• April 2014: A new line begins to operate to serve Zone 18 from the Atlantida neighbourhood to the Downtown core.
• 2014: Construction begins for the northern line, later renamed line 6 after the Zone in which it terminates from the downtown core.
• April 2015: Line 6 (Eje Norte), begins service.[3]
• January 2016: A new short line opens to serve the Racecourse neighbourhood to the downtown core[4]
• 2016: All lines were renamed after the zones they operate in or serve. Eje Sur was renamed Line 12 as it mainly operates in zone 12, Corredor Central was renamed Line 13 as it connects Zone 13 with the Downtown Core, Cnetro Historico was renamed Line 1 as it serves the Zone 1 Downtown, Eje Norte was renamed Line 6 as it terminates in Zone 6, Eje Nor-oriente is renamed Line 18 as it terminates in Zone 18, Hipodromo was renamed Line 2 as it serves Zone 2.
• 2017: Line 21 begins operating as a pilot project to improve transportation to and from the USAC University campus. It had not yet been changed to a permanent route but is marked on the map as the pink line.

Transmetro bus entering a station

Transmetro buses operating on Line 12

Line 12 starts from Zone 1 in Guatemala City, it runs through the Civic Centre, Bolivar Avenue, Trebol Station, Raul Aguilar Batres Way and finally terminating at Centra Sur, in Zone 12 of neighbouring Villa Nueva city.

The second line to be opened, Corridor Central or Eje Central, runs through zones 4, 9, and 13 of Guatemala City. The buses are similar to the ones on Line 12, except for the Bi-articulated buses. The change in bus types was done to allow the line to travel through the historic centre as the streets are narrower compared to those of the CA1.

Another interesting difference between Line 12 and Line 13 is that, when Line 13 was still a proposal, the developer promised to revitalize the areas where the Line would eventually operate. This revitalization included new monuments, better sidewalks, improvement of street vendor spaces, and others.

Line 13 connects with Line 12 at "Plaza Barrios" and "El Calvario", creating seamless connections to the downtown and the southern areas of the city. Stations on this line are equipped with accessibility features such as braille that tells users the name of the stations and the connecting lines.

This line, as mentioned earlier, runs through the historic downtown, this means that during its journey it will pass by popular landmarks of the city such as the Torre del Reformador, the Acueducto de Pinula, the Bank of Guatemala, Civic Centre, and 6th Avenue, a popular pedestrian-only section of the city.

Line 13 was expanded to service further into zones 9 and 10, which due to road limitations forced it to be broken up into 2 segments. The ones listed above are part of the first segment and the ones below are part of the second segment.

Line 1 works in mainly in Zone 1 of Guatemala's Downtown. This line was built soon after Line 13 began operations. The main goal of this line was to make the historic centre more accessible through safe and reliable public transportation. This line travels from 3rd Street in Zone 1, towards 18th Street in Zone 1, passing through 5th Street and 8th Street. This line started service on December 19th, 2012. [5]

L1 Transmetro departing Tipografia Station.

L6 or Eje Norte, runs from 18th Street in Zone 1 to Cementos Progreso Stadium in Guatemala's Zone 6, on its journey, it passes by the popular Colon Park (Parque Colon). Its stations began construction in October 2014 and the route was fully functional by April 25th of 2015[6]. A trip from one end to the other takes an average of 50 minutes[3].

As its name in Spanish describes, this line travels to the North West corner of the city. Departing from Plaza Barrios-FEGUA Station at 18th Street in Zone 1, ti travels through very important, high traffic areas and sites of interest like Colon Park. This line began operating on April 25th 2014 and continues to be under construction specially in the northern segment of the route to improve road conditions and exclusive traffic lane. For the stations that are under construction, Line 18 uses temporary boarding stations not far from the final locations.