Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Panama Upgrades The Cinta Costera Coastal Highway

By Tyler Ramos


Beautiful Panama, located at the southern most tip of Central America, has become a highly popular destination due to its economic stability and steady growth. The economic upswing has made available the necessary funding to improve the infrastructure of Panama City. This is needed to alleviate the congestion that plagues the city's Avenida Balboa.

The city plans on alleviating the congested flow of traffic in the city by building the Coastal Beltway as a mean of bypassing the city. Currently the Avenida Balboa is used daily by over 72,000 motorists. Parking space is also at a premium and so an area of twenty five hectares is going to be created along the Cinta Costera Coastal Beltway.

This project is scheduled to be completed during the month of April 2009 it is estimated to cost the city $189.1 million to complete satisfactorily. Two Brazilian contractors are heading the project, one being the Constructora Norberto Oldebrecht and the other is the Constructora Urbana company. They will be responsible for the maintenance of the project for the five years after its construction.

Alliance Pro City and two of their architects, Alberto Arosemena and Boris Aguilar were instrumental in designing this innovative infrastructure improvement project. Land reclamation will be a large part of the project and dredgers will be used to take sand directly from the seabed and move it to a rock landfill site. The plan is to reclaim thirty hectares of land in the Panama Bay area to complete the Coastal Beltway.

The completed Cinta Costera Coastal Beltway will be seven kilometres in length and will have a 2.6 kilometre section with four lanes. In addition to the new Coastal Belt there will also be a path for pedestrian access, a breakwater, two elevated viaducts and a bike path. The new design will allow for three different access points at regular intervals.

The twenty five hectare car park that is being built will also house an ampitheatre. Due to the new construction, the Avenida Balboa will be adjacent to the new Coastal Belt roadway, running parallel to it, eventually feeding into it. The existing six lanes will become ten lanes to further help with traffic congestion. Six of the lanes will run from Punta Paitilla to San Felipe, with four lanes going the other way.

The Avenida third de Noviembre bridge will allow access to the new Beltway wit the building of new access points. The next access point will allow access to the Beltway nearer to Casco Viejo and then further along at the bridge that runs along the Israel route by the Matasnillo River.

Along with the plans to build the Coastal Beltway the city will spend money to improve the infrastructure of the sewerage and water supply systems in the Panama Bay area. The hope is that the Coastal Beltway will dramatically reduce traffic congestion levels and reduce travel time in the Panama Bay area.




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