Coastal Beltway (Cinta Costera), Panama City, Panama

Panama City is one city in Central America where congestion has reached crisis point. The city is going through an unprecedented period of stability and investment and there are ample public funds for infrastructure improvement projects.

One of the newest road improvement projects is the Coastal Beltway or Cinta Costera (translation means literally 'coastal tape') project. This project is intended to decongest the road network of Panama City by providing a bypass route past the city.

The Avenida Balboa currently accepts the brunt of this traffic with 72,000 vehicles per day passing along it. The new Coastal Beltway will relieve this congestion and also as part of the project provide around 25ha of park area for the use of residents of this area of the city.

The project, which started in October 2007, is scheduled to be completed by April 2009 and will cost an estimated $189.1m.

CONTRACTORS

The main contractor for the project is a joint venture of the Brazilian company Constructora Norberto Oldebrecht and Constructora Urbana SA (Odebrecht-CUSA). The project is being overseen by the General Controllers office of the Republic of Panama. Norberto Oldebrecht has agreed to provide maintenance and management for the road for a five-year period after it is opened.

The road project was initially designed by Alliance Pro City but this has been modified since by the two architects, Boris Aguilar and Alberto Arosemena. The work to reclaim the land began on 15 October 2007 with several dredgers taking sand from the seabed and pumping it to the rock landfill area.

THE PROJECT

A major part of the project will be the reclamation of around 30ha of land on Panama Bay to accommodate parts of the new road and the new park area. The first section of the road system will consist of a 2.6km four-lane highway with each lane being 3.5m wide and with three interchanges. When all sections are completed the road will be 7km. There will also be a breakwater to protect against the sea, two elevated viaducts, a bike path and pedestrian access paths.

As part of the project the area is being redeveloped and the 25ha park is part of this; the park will also have an amphitheatre. With the new road under construction, the Avenida Balboa will run parallel and feed into the Coastal Beltway. It will also be revamped so that it will have ten lanes, with six going from Punta Paitilla to San Felipe and four in the reverse direction.

The bridge connecting Avenida 3rd de noviembre and Avenida Balboa is to be modified so that there will be an entrance and an exit to the new Coastal Beltway (viaduct); there will be a further access towards Casco Viejo and the City. The final interchange (viaduct) will be from the Israel route to the bridge on the Matasnillo River.

The Coastal Beltway will start at Punta Pacifica Neighbourhood and end just before the old city in the San Felipe district. The project is being run in conjunction with the Panama Bay clean-up project which will revamp the sewerage and waste systems along this area of the bay.

Click here for printable version