Line 8 (Panama Metro)

The Panama Metro () is a rapid transit system in Panama City, Panama. It links neighborhoods north and the east of the metropolitan area to the city center.

The Metro was built to relieve the traffic congestion between the city and San Miguelito District and to offer commuters a viable alternative to road transport, as the MiBus transit system was suffering multiple issues.

The Metro operates seven days a week and 365 days a year. Its hours are Monday-Friday 05:00–23:00, Saturday 05:00–22:00, and Sundays and holidays 07:00–22:00.

The Line 1 opened on April 6, 2014, serving 14 stations. Line 2 was opened partially and temporarily between January 14 and 17, 2019 for World Youth Day festivities and permanently opened on April 25; it covers a route and serves sixteen stations. A three-station branch line (El Ramal) to the Airport opened on March 16, 2023.

San Miguelito is the interchange station for both lines.

The Panama Metro is part of a major "National Master Plan" to improve transportation around Panama City, which includes the construction of two more rapid transit lines, two monorail lines, three tram lines, and an aerial lift line.

History

Line 1

Development

The government of Panama invited tenders for a contract to build the metro system. The governments of Brazil and Taiwan offered to invest on the project. After an exhaustive inspection of all proposals for the construction of the railway system, the Línea Uno consortium, which includes the Spanish Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas (FCC), won the contract.

In October 2009, the POYRY/Cal y Mayor y Asociados consortium won the contract for counseling the project development, and in January 2010, Systra was awarded a contract to create detailed infrastructure designs.

The first phase of the project consisted of planning, cost estimation, and technical feasibility. The second phase consisted of several soil studies, topography, and demand refinings. Both phases were started and executed simultaneously in late 2009.

Construction

In December 2010, the government finally awarded the tender for the construction of the subway. The third and the fourth phases of the project took place between 2011 and 2012 and consisted of the construction of all viaducts and stations and the relocation of the public utilities. The control center that supervises the whole metro operations and the Automatic Train Supervision was provided by Thales, along with the network infrastructure and communication and security solutions including CCTV, telephony, intercom, TETRA radio, visual and audio information to passengers, and fire detection.

By September 2013, construction of Line 1 was 92% complete, which allowed a test run with some of the rolling stock.

Cost

The construction of Line 1 cost $1.452 billion. The authority in charge of the planning, construction, and execution of the project had a budget of $200 million for the year 2012. In December 2011, the Secretaría del Metro de Panamá clarified that the updated cost of the project is billion, including public utilities relocations and engineering and project management costs.

Early operations

On April 5, 2014, Line 1 was opened, and the first public passenger trips on the new system were carried out. The next day, the line entered active passenger revenue service. In its first year of operations, the system carried 200,000 people per day on average, 25% more than had been expected.

The initial segment of Panama Metro's Line 1 ran over a mostly north–south route, from Los Andes to the Albrook bus station (where the system's maintenance shop is located), and extended over of route, including underground and elevated. Initially, Line 1 had 11 passenger stations: 5 elevated, 5 underground, and 1 at-grade; 3 more stations were later added. The twelfth station, Lotería, which was the sixth underground station, opened on August 27, 2014. The El Ingenio subway station, located between the underground Fernández de Córdoba station and the first elevated station, 12 de Octubre, was originally scheduled to open in August 2014, but it opened on May 8, 2015.

The original northern terminus station of the metro was Los Andes. However, it was a temporary terminus station since the government had approved an extension of Line 1 to a final elevated station in San Isidro. San Isidro was also originally scheduled to open in August 2014, but it finally opened on August 15, 2015. The extension to San Isidro added of route to the system and extended the metro's total route length to .

Line 2

Development

On May 16, 2014, three different consortiums offered several proposals for the planning, cost estimation, and technical feasibility of Line 2 of the system. After making a detailed inquiry of all proposals, the Metro de Panama secretary announced on July 12, 2014, that the PML2 consortium, which includes the Spanish "Ayesa Ingeniería y Arquitectura", the "Barcelona Metro", and the American "Louis Berger Group," had been awarded the contract. The project was to cost $2.200 billion. It ended up costing only $1.857 billion.

The construction contract was awarded to Linea 2 Consortium, formed by Odebrecht from Brazil and FCC from Spain, the same consortium that built Line 1 of the Panama Metro. Construction officially started in September 2015. Originally, Line 2 had to be delivered in April 2019, but since Panama City was hosting the Catholic World Youth Summit in January 2019, construction was being accelerated, and a new delivery date was announced as December 31, 2018, to serve the one million tourists who were expected to attend the summit. However, in 2018, a month-long labor strike eroded over US$900 million from the annual GDP figure and caused the same amount of losses. That pushed back the delivery date to the original delivery date. However, the first test ran with 12 trains for 8 hours was conducted on December 28, with a partial opening on January 15 with five stations for the summit. The line was then closed again and re-opened on the original date. In August 2018, it was announced that Line 2 would operate partially from Corredor Sur to San Miguelito 24 hours a day during the summit. In January 2019, it was announced that Line 2 would open from January 18 to 28, with five stations operating, including 42 hours of continuous operations on the 26th and the 27th.

Line 2 was formally opened on April 25, 2019.

On March 16, 2023, a branch of Line 2, known as El Ramal, connecting Corredor Sur and Tocumen International Airport, Aeropuerto, was opened. There are no through trains to Aeropuerto, the trains start at Corredor Sur.

Operations

Line 1

Panama Metro's Line 1 runs over a mostly north–south route from Villa Zaita to the Albrook bus station (where a Metro maintenance facility is located). It extends over of route, including underground. It has 14 passenger stations: 6 elevated, 7 underground, and 1 at-grade. The stations have a platform length of approximately .

A complete journey of Line 1 lasts about 25 minutes. It begins its current route at the elevated Villa Zaita station, then continues on viaduct to San Isidro station, north of the city, continuing on viaduct via the original terminus of Los Andes, Pan de Azúcar station, San Miguelito station, Pueblo Nuevo (close to the Estrella Azul factory) to reach 12 de Octubre (the final elevated station), where it enters a trench, towards the underground section of Line 1. It continues its journey through the underground stations of El Ingenio, Fernandez de Cordoba, Vía Argentina, Iglesia del Carmen, Santo Tomás, Lotería, and 5 de Mayo. Finally, it reaches the terminus station, the system's only at-grade station, Albrook, with a bridge connection to the bus terminal and Albrook Mall.

Line 2

Panama Metro's Line 2 runs over a mostly west-east route from San Miguelito station (interchange station with Line 1) to Nuevo Tocumen station (where are located the maintenance shop of Line 2) It extends over 23 kilometers of route, this line have 18 stations (16 in the main line and 2 in the extension inaugurated in March 2023 called "El Ramal") all the stations in this line are elevated, the stations have the same length platform that the Line 1 stations.

The stations are: San Miguelito, Paraíso, Cincuentenario, Villa Lucre, El Crisol, Brisas del Golf, Cerro Viento (this station gives access to Metromall and Centro Comercial Los Pueblos), San Antonio, Pedregal, Don Bosco, Corredor Sur (station of interchange with "El Ramal"), Las Mañanitas, Hospital del Este, Altos de Tocumen, 24 de Diciembre and Nuevo Tocumen (where the maintenance shop of Line 2 is located). Line 2 formally opened on April 25, 2019.

The stations of the Ramal are: Corredor Sur (interchange station with the primary route of Line 2), ITSE (serves the Instituto Técnico Superior Especializado) and Aeropuerto (serves Tocumen International Airport).

Operating hours

The Metro operates seven days a week and 365 days a year. Its hours are Monday-Friday 05:00–23:00, Saturday 05:00–22:00, and Sundays and holidays 07:00–22:00.

Rolling stock

Alstom has delivered 19 three-car Metropolis trainsets for the Panamá Metro. The rolling stock is very similar to the Barcelona Metro 9000 Series and were built at Alstom's factory in Spain and underwent preliminary testing on the FGC network in Barcelona.

The first three trains were shipped from Spain and arrived May 25, 2013. The standard gauge units have air-conditioning, CCTV, and passenger information and can accommodate 600 passengers per trainset. The trains initially consist of three-car sets, but all stations were built to accommodate five-car trainsets in anticipation of expected future ridership demand and some trains delivered since February 2018 have five cars, instead of three.

Trains collect their power from a rigid, I-shaped, overhead rail using a pantograph. The system delivers to trains with 13.8 kV 60 Hz AC being used for power distribution to the power substations that supply the DC power.

Planned expansion

The metro is eventually planned to extend to 9 lines by 2040 or 2035. The first five lines will be metro lines, with the last three tram lines, a cable car system for San Miguelito and a monorail line for the planned city of Panama Pacifico.

Line 1

Line 1 is nearly complete in its current form. Curundu, an infill station near the southern end of Line 1, was part of the original plans but had not been built in March 2025. An extension to La Cabima was proposed but was ruled out by the director of the metro in 2025.

Line 2

Line 2 will run for from Parque Urraca, in the Punta Pacifica district to Felipillo, and will be built in three phases. The first phase will run from San Miguelito to Nuevo Tocumen. The first phase of construction took four years. Construction on Line 2 broke ground on October 5, 2015, with construction expected to take 44 months.

The second phase (Line 2A) will then extend the line from San Miguelito to either Parque Urraca or Punta Pacifica, in the south of Panama City. It will be almost completely underground. Line 2A will be only 9 km long, but since building a metro line underground costs three times as much as building it an elevated metro line, Line 2A could cost as much as Line 2. The final phase will extend the line by one station, from Nuevo Tocumen to Felipillo. Phase 1 is long, and as of September 2018, the new line was 85% complete, allowing for test runs until Cerro Viento station with four (5-car) trains. By November 2018, test runs covered the entire length of phase 1. Fourteen trains were operational in the World Youth Day in January 2019 in manual mode at a top speed of . In normal operation, trains will run autonomously at with the driver only supervising the train's systems. A branch line is proposed that would start on Condado del Rey station and run along the Via Centenario until it reaches MERCA Panama.

Line 3 (monorail)

Line 3 is planned to run and serve 14 stations between West Panama and Albrook station in Panama City, where transfers can be made to Line 1. The line will travel in a tunnel up to under the Panama Canal. Line 3 is financed by a US$2.6 billion loan from the Japanese government, with Japanese firms taking the lead on the project. Hitachi Rail is the primary contractor for the line and will supply 28 six-car Hitachi Monorail

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