Transport and the shape of the city in Santiago

One integrated system, and the card

Red buses, the Metro and Tren Nos, the line between San Bernardo and Estación Central, form one trimodal system on one fare structure. You pay with a bip! card or with a QR code generated in the Red app or the BancoEstado app. The card itself costs CLP 1,550 and carries no credit, and the balance on it caps at CLP 25,500.

• The initial top-up is CLP 750 at a ticket office or a machine; after that the minimum is CLP 750 at a ticket office and CLP 100 or CLP 1,000 at a machine, depending on the machine.
• Buy and top up at Metro and Tren Nos ticket offices, the 57 Centro bip! locations, affiliated Puntos bip! shops, and Unimarc, Líder, A Cuenta, Ekono and some OK Market supermarkets. Centro bip! cashiers have no minimum.
• Cards come as bearer or personalised. Only a personalised card, carrying your name and photo, can be blocked and its balance recovered if it is lost or stolen.

Fares, bands and transfers

The bus is a flat CLP 795 at any hour. The Metro and Tren Nos are banded by time: CLP 735 in horario bajo (06:00 to 06:59 and 20:45 to 23:00), CLP 815 in horario valle (weekdays 09:00 to 17:59 and 20:00 to 20:44, and all day on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays), and CLP 895 in horario punta (07:00 to 08:59 and 18:00 to 19:59). Because a transfer tops the fare up to the dearest leg rather than charging twice, a bus boarded in horario bajo followed by the Metro costs nothing extra.

• Two transfers within 120 minutes of the first boarding, in the same direction, without repeating a bus route. One may be on the Metro and one on Tren Nos.
• Secondary and higher-education students pay a flat CLP 260 on all modes at any hour, all year, with the same transfer rules and no peak surcharge.
• People aged 65 and over pay CLP 390 on the integrated network with a bip! Adulto Mayor card, or CLP 260 on a TAM card valid on the Metro only.
• Paying by QR means a Cuenta bip!QR, created free with ClaveÚnica in the Red app and topped up from CLP 100 to CLP 50,000. It charges the adult fare: the student and older-person discounts do not run on it yet.

Hours, works and diversions

The Metro runs 06:00 to 23:00 Monday to Friday, from 06:30 on Saturdays and from 07:30 on Sundays and public holidays, and ticket offices keep the same hours except on Sundays and holidays, when they close at 22:30. Individual lines and interchanges stop at different times, so a late entry into the system can strand you part of the way home. Five projects are being built at once, Línea 7, Línea 8, Línea 9, Línea A and an extension of Línea 6, and the work shows at street level, where bus stops beside the excavations get moved. Stops near works change with little notice, so check red.cl/estado-del-servicio before you depend on one.

• Journey planner and arrival times at red.cl/planifica-tu-viaje. The Red help line is 800 73 0073.

The airport

There is no rail or Metro link to Arturo Merino Benítez. The scheduled service is Buses Centropuerto, every 15 minutes every day, between the airport and Intermodal Pajaritos on Metro Line 1, Terminal Sur and Metro República. A single is CLP 2,400 and a return CLP 4,100, with the return leg valid for 90 days from issue, and the company's airport office is opposite stand 24 of the airport bus terminal.

Driving, and the restricción vehicular

The routine restriction does not catch a modern car, which is the opposite of what most arrivals assume. In 2026 it ran from 1 May to 31 August, Monday to Friday excluding public holidays, 07:30 to 21:00, barring two number-plate digits a day across the Provincia de Santiago plus San Bernardo and Puente Alto. It applies to catalytic sello verde vehicles registered before 1 September 2011, motorbikes registered before 2010, vehicles with no sello verde and motorbikes registered before 2002, and non-sello-verde buses and goods vehicles including pick-ups. A car registered after September 2011 is caught only when an environmental pre-emergency or emergency is declared and extra digits are announced through the Ministry's own social channels, which is what happens on bad winter days, so in winter you check daily.

• Individuals apply for an exemption online through the Subsecretaría de Transportes; companies email the form to ofiparteseremirmt@mtt.gob.cl.