Panama Metro
The Panama Metro is a rapid transit system serving Panama City, Panama. Developed to ease traffic congestion between the city and the San Miguelito District and to provide an alternative to road transport, the metro supplements the MiBus network and operates daily throughout the year.
Line 1 opened on April 6, 2014 and spans with 15 stations. Line 2 followed in 2019, temporarily opening for World Youth Day in late January and later entering regular service on April 25 of that year. It extends with 19 stations, including a branch to Tocumen International Airport that opened in 2023. The San Miguelito station serves as the interchange between the two lines.
The metro is part of a broader National Master Plan to improve transportation around Panama City, which includes the construction of two additional 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, 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. The final cost for Line 1, including its extension to Villa Zaita was approximately US$2.2 billion.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, 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. The line was extended an additional to the north to a new terminus at Villa Zaita which opened on April 25, 2024, bringing the total line 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.
The final cost of Line 2, including the branch to Tocumen International Airport, is about US$2.13 billion.
Operations
Line 1
Line 1 runs along a primarily north–south route between Villa Zaita and Albrook, which also houses a maintenance facility. The line is long, including about underground. It has 15 stations: 7 elevated, 7 underground, and 1 at-grade, each with platforms approximately in length. A complete journey takes about 25 minutes.The route begins at Villa Zaita, continues on viaduct through San Isidro, Los Andes, and San Miguelito, then transitions to a trench and underground section through central Panama City. The line terminates at Albrook, which connects directly to the city’s main bus terminal and the Albrook Mall.
Line 2
Line 2 follows an east–west alignment from San Miguelito, where it interchanges with Line 1, to Nuevo Tocumen, which includes the line’s maintenance facilities. The main line is approximately long and has 18 stations, all elevated. Additional service tracks linking the line to Line 1 at the West end and the yard at the North end. Platforms are the same length as those on Line 1. Line 2 opened on April 25, 2019.In March 2023, a short three-station branch known as El Ramal opened, linking the main route at Corredor Sur station to Tocumen International Airport.
Operating hours
The metro operates daily throughout the year. Trains generally operate from 05:00 to 23:00 on weekdays, from 05:00 to 22:00 on Saturdays and from 07:00 to 22:00 on Sundays and public holidays.Rolling stock
has delivered 19 three-car Metropolis trainsets for the metro. The trains are similar to the Barcelona Metro 9000 Series and were built at Alstom’s factory in Spain, with testing carried out on the FGC network in Barcelona. The first three units arrived in Panama on May 25, 2013.The standard-gauge trainsets feature air-conditioning, on-board CCTV, passenger information systems, and a capacity of about 600 passengers. While the initial fleet was made up of three-car sets, all stations were designed to handle five-car formations. Since February 2018, some trains have entered service with five cars.
Trains draw power from a rigid overhead conductor rail via pantograph, while substations are supplied with 13.8 kV AC at 60 Hz.