Feliz Viaje — Panamá
By: Joel Epstein
Panamá in Transit
Like my Grandpa Dan, I never met a bus or train I didn’t like. The fact that they exist at all makes them worthy of praise in my book. It is winter in New York and I heard somewhere that they have buses and a metro in Panamá so I caught the first flight I could and beat it out of the City before the door to my apartment was frozen shut. For the past couple of weeks I have been in Panamá doing what I always do, studying how people get around.
Here in Panamá, ‘transit’ has a different meaning than the way one usually thinks of it. Transit in Panamá refers to how ships pass through the locks of the Panama Canal. For example, many cruise ship passengers opt to partially transit the canal which means they only go part of the way from one coast to the other. Full transit means navigating the entire canal from the Caribbean to the Pacific, or vice versa.
Of course even I have my least favorite bus experiences. And being here I have now added to my list the diablo rojo (brightly painted old school buses common in Panamá) I was on last week that broke down midway between Portobelo and Sabanitas.
Still, the pain was short lived. A half hour waiting in the shade of a big tree along the Caribbean in the late afternoon before another bus arrived and sped us to our destination. A cold Balboa, the local best selling beer, for under a dollar at the parada in Sabanitas also helped. I can get used to this I thought. Frequent bus service to even the smallest towns and cold beer at a reasonable price.
The sheer ubiquity of transit offered on Panama City’s official buses and trains and private busitos and diablos rojos is my latest source of transit envy.
Though they say the diablos rojos are being phased out, I am riding plenty of them during this first trip to Panamá. The diablos can be loud and are surely more polluting than the newer city buses, but for me they have a certain charm with their religious or sensual ‘art work’ and often blaring pop music. Before throwing the first stone at these polluters, remember that in the U.S. where a lot of these old buses come from, we are still transporting school kids on them and they are not even colorfully painted.
Also in the U.S., transit advocates like me spend too much time celebrating the completion of phase one of a three phase subway construction project billions of dollars over budget and decades behind schedule.
Let’s just stop!
As I have said before, beyond the fact that they exist, there is nothing admirable about the gold plated 7 train extension to Hudson Yards or the decades late Second Avenue subway to 96th Street. Add to those shamefully costly projects, the just announced further delay in the opening of the LAX people mover, now scheduled to debut no sooner than April 2025.
Traffic
From what I am experiencing, traffic in Panamá is almost as bad as in New York or LA, Chicago, Miami or Atlanta. Still, with all this transit to ride, I’ll take it over a New York City winter. Why? Weather aside, because I can get anywhere I want to go without taking a cab or an Uber. In Panama City, every three or four blocks there is a bus stop and the public buses are frequent and cost 25 cents with two free transfers. The city’s buses are basic and clean and air conditioned and they are comfortable and well designed for rush hour.
Passengers enter the bus at the front through a turnstile using a reloadable fare card and exit through a turnstile at the middle with a pad that you tap if you want a free transfer. I have seen a few people jump the turnstile in the middle of a crowded bus but most riders pay the fare. It is the same drill on the Metro de Panamá, a two line system that only opened in 2014 and is very popular with riders. Passengers use the same fare card to ride the Metro for 35 centavos. Riders tap when they enter a turnstile and when they leave the system. No, I don’t look forward to being back on the A and D trains, my go to MTA trains, though I do miss that they (mostly) run express. There are no express trains on the Metro de Panamá.
The Train that Gold Built
Prompted by the California Gold Rush to open the world’s first transcontinental railroad in 1855, Panamá was much later to the table on construction of the Metro de Panamá. It wasn’t until 2014, one hundred years after the opening of the Panama Canal, that Pamaná completed its first metro line. The fast, clean, open gangway system (with no doors allowing passengers to move freely between the cars), which runs partially above ground, is a pleasure to ride. Think San Juan, Puerto Rico’s Tren Urbano but spanking clean and packed with passengers. Panamá is clearly doing things right in the Metro de Panamá department, and work is underway to extend existing Líneas 1 y 2 and to build a third line that will extend the system to well west of the existing terminus of Línea 1 at Albrook Station. Albrook is also linked through a pedestrian highway overpass to the busy Gran Terminal Nacional De Transporte, the country’s regional and international bus station.
Open gangway train cars, something New Yorkers hope the MTA will eventually figure out how to run on the A train, add needed capacity to Metro de Panamá trains.
Like the Metro, with so many riders reliant on them, the buses here can get busy. While some shun crowded trains and buses, I celebrate them as it means they are safer than if few people are riding. LA Metro and other urban transit systems in the U.S. know that all too well.
Though Citymapper is my go to transit app, it’s not available in Panamá (get on it!) so I use Google Maps to get around. For the uninitiated, a bar to riding the bus here is that there is no signage at the bus shelters indicating which buses stop there. Instead, all the buses are clearly marked with their destination. At the larger bus terminals like 5 de Mayo, the system speeds boarding with a metro-like turnstile system.
To say it again, it’s that you can get practically anywhere you want to go in Panamá without a car that gives me transit envy. Even in New York, the gold standard of public transit in the U.S., there are vast transit deserts. Large swaths of the City and region remain pretty inaccessible unless you can find a dollar van or want to drop more money than anyone should have to pay to ride an Uber or cab.
True, in New York itself, with Citi Bike and the MTA and feet that still like to walk, that’s rarely the case for me. But what about the elderly and disabled and others who have somewhere to go and have limited options?
In Panamá, between Metro trains and buses, diablos rojos and busitos (smaller private buses) few neighborhoods seem to be off limits.
Hubris
I like what I see here. But being here also shows one the societal cost of “progress.” For many, Panamá was put on the map with the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914. Though the opening of the railroad in Panamá was important, it was the Canal that transformed world affairs and the transportation of goods around the globe. Being in Panamá, one can’t help but think about the cost so many have paid for the unbridled ambition of men like Ferdinand de Lessep. A larger than life figure, de Lessep developed the Suez Canal, only to become the victim of his hubris when he tried to build a canal in Panamá at sea level. Malaria and yellow fever which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of workers, as well as insurmountable financial problems for de Lessep’s bankers, opened the door to the Frenchman selling his Act Two to the U.S. Only too happy to oblige for the way in which the Canal would give the Yankees further regional and global hegemony, the U.S. found a solution to the epidemic of tropical disease and changed the design of the canal to an approach that included creating a massive lake (Lake Gatún) and a series of locks. I leave that tale to better writers than me, including David McCullough’s whose weighty tome, A Path Between the Seas, was still worth schlepping to Panama.
Promotor de Tránsito
Given Panama City’s soul crushing traffic, expansion of the Metro can’t come soon enough for Panamá.
Though bus-only lanes In downtown Panama City help, it is the Metro that holds the most promise for quickly moving large numbers of Panamanians.
I look forward to riding the new line and extensions on my next trip.
Thanks for reading! In my next piece, I plan to write about Panama City’s weekly Ciclovía along the Cinta Costera. Beyond the capital, Panamá has a lot to offer promotores de tránsito como yo as well as travelers with a less singular focus.
Yours in transit,
Joel
Joel Epstein is a New Yorker and an advocate for public transit, livable cities and public space.
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