HPH Consortium, the joint venture overseeing the design and construction of the Panama Metro Line 3, has selected Ricardo as its chosen experts to provide RAMS safety support systems during its construction.

The HPH Consortium joint venture comprises Hyundai Engineering and Construction, Posco Engineering and Construction and Hyundai Engineering. Ricardo’s responsibilities will focus on ensuring the design, system integration and final system of this monorail line comply with the RAMS - reliability, availability, maintainability and safety - requirements stipulated by the project’s owner, Metro de Panamá. This entails monitoring performance indicators and enhancing operational efficiencies and addressing problems as they emerge.

Panama metro line 3 will be a 34km-long, mostly elevated monorail line will establish a connection between Panama City and major urban centres in the province of Panama Oeste such as Arraiján and, at a later stage, La Chorrera.

Work on Phase 1 - the 25km, 14 station section to Ciudad del Futuro - commenced in February 2022 and it is expected to be ready for passenger service in 2026.

Once fully operational, the monorail is expected to halve the current average time for the full-length journey from 90 to 45 minutes. With trains offering a capacity of 1000 passengers each, Phase 1 is expected to serve 20,000 passengers per day per direction during peak periods, with services operating at four-minute intervals.

The monorail will be the first to use Japanese technology in the Americas, with the vehicles, signalling and communications systems provided by a consortium of Hitachi, Hitachi Rail and Mitsubishi.