PANAMA: President Juan Carlos Varela and Metro de Panama Director Roberto Roy officially launched construction of the second metro line in the capital on October 5. The timetable for construction is 44 months.
The line is being built by the Línea 2 consortium of Odebrecht and FCC. A consortium of Alstom, TSO-CIM, Thales and Sofratesa is to undertake electrical and mechanical work. Services will be provided by a fleet of 21 five-car Alstom Metropolis trainsets.
The 21 km first phase will run on an elevated alignment east from San Miguelito, where interchange will be provided with Line 1, to Nuevo Tocumen, where the depot will be located. There will be 16 stations, and the end-to-end journey time is expected to be 35 min. The line has a design capacity of 40 000 passengers/h per direction, although initial ridership is expected at 16 000 passengers/h per direction.
