TBM starts work on Panama Metro

30 January 2012

A 9.7m diameter Herrenknecht TBM began excavating the 6.4km-long subway for Panama City’s Line One on 23 Jan.

The project’s contractor, an FCC-led consortium with Odebrecht, has a budget of more than EUR 1bn (USD 1.4bn) to build the subway line, and is currently assembling a second Herrenknecht EPBM, to be launched on the project in March.

The machine was named Marta after Panama president Ricardo Martinelli’s wife. It is expected to excavate an average of 16m per day, starting at the southern end of the alignment. The EPBM, Carolina, will be launched at the northern end of the project.