Red Metropolitana de Movilidad (English: Metropolitan Mobility Network; named Transantiago until March 2019)[1] is a public transport system that serves Santiago, the capital of Chile.

[2] The system, largely influenced by Bogotá, Colombia's TransMilenio and Curitiba, Brazil's RIT, was introduced on February 10, 2007.

It includes an integrated fare system, which allows passengers to make bus-to-bus or bus-to-metro transfers for the price of one ticket, using a single contactless smart card.

Transantiago's implementation was problematic, as the decreased bus fleet and the newer routes have proved insufficient to properly serve a population inadequately informed of pending changes.

The major complaints are the lack of buses and their inconsistent frequencies, missing or poor infrastructure (such as segregated corridors, prepaid areas and bus stops), the network's coverage, and the number of transfers needed for longer trips.

Transantiago's first stage of implementation began on October 22, 2005, when a group of ten new companies took control of the capital's bus system, immediately introducing 1,181 new, modern low-floor buses (approximately half of them being articulated) made by Volvo in Brazil, replacing 461 yellow-colored buses from the old system.

The first subsystem corresponds to the main bus lines, which complementing the metro network allow long trips between different zones of the city.

The requirement to have each business unit with different companies was eliminated and the relationship between these tours are encouraged, in order to provide better service to passengers by reducing transfers.

In this way, the color of the buses does not represent the zone covering the system as stipulated in the beginning and remained until June 2012.

Passengers who do not have the card may pay in cash (only in feeder buses), but at a higher fare and without possibility of reduced transfers.

Its main tasks are the distribution and charging of the card, the administration of the revenues and the payment to the operators, according to the rules established in the contracts.

An electric bus implementation program in Santiago, Chile, inspired by the buses in Bogotá, Colombia, began in 2014 through a partnership between the Chilean Ministry of Transport and two privately held companies, Enel X and BYD, an Italian electric company and a Chinese bus making manufacturer, respectively.

First, electric buses are substantially cheaper to operate, lowering the cost by 70% compared with typical diesel vehicles.

Bus owners' contracts offered no incentive to improve service, as they received a fixed payment no matter how many passengers they transport.

Although polls had shown the citizens of Santiago were overwhelmingly in favor of a new transport system,[11] its implementation was heavily criticized for not meeting up to people's expectations.

Opposition politicians on both sides of the political spectrum—from Communist Party Secretary General Guillermo Teillier to right-wing UDI deputy Iván Moreira—criticized the implementation of the new system, calling it "improvised" and "unprofessional".

Support in Santiago for President Michelle Bachelet's government fell from 55.2% in February to 42.7% in March, 2007, after the Transantiago began operating, according to the monthly Adimark polls.

[16][17][18][19] Several other Latin American cities, such as Curitiba, Brazil (the pioneering system in the world), Bogotá, Colombia, and Montevideo, Uruguay, implemented similar BRT schemes, but gradually, phasing in the scheme in several stages, allowing to make adjustments and hastily fixing glitches, without any serious disruption to transit services.