If the General Directorate of Public Procurement (DGCP) endorses the report of the evaluation commission, the cost of the design and basic details of the tunnel on line 3 of the Metro, which will be built below the Panama Canal will  cost $9.8 million.

The Tunnel of the Americas Consortium made up of the companies Técnica y Proyectos, SA (Typsa) and Louis Berger LAC, obtained the best rating within the review of the 4 proposals received by the Panama Metro.

The group obtained a rating of 930 points, out of a total of 1,000, in addition to presenting the cheapest offer. The group's offer is $3.2 million below the estimated price by the Metro.

Originally, the tunnel was not part of the design of Line 3 that will be built by the Korean consortium HPH Joint Venture, made up of the companies Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co., Ltd. and Posco Engineering Construction, at a cost of $2.844 billion.

Next October, the placement of the piles that will support the structure of the viaduct through which the monorail will pass must begin.

It is estimated that line 3 will benefit more than 500,00 residents of Panama Oeste.

By opting for the tunnel, Laurentino Cortizo's administration discarded the original design that contemplated the passage of the monorail through the central lanes of the fourth bridge, a project that has remained in limbo because it has no assigned budget, despite the fact that it was awarded in 2018 reports La Prensa.

In the speech presented to the National Assembly last Thursday, President Cortizo indicated that the construction of the tunnel was part of the special projects that will be carried out over the next few years

Metro estimates indicate that the construction of the underground section, which will extend for more than five kilometers, would have an estimated cost of $360 million. The mass transit company decided to bid separately for the design and construction of the tunnel to obtain better offers.

The diameter of the tunnel will be 13 meters and it will have a pumping and drainage station, and it will be divided in half to simulate the effect that there are two tunnels within the same structure.

According to the data provided by the Metro to the companies that competed to design the tunnel, the work will have a maximum depth of 65 meters.

To understand the magnitude of the project, the greatest depth reached by the tunnel on line 1 was 35 meters.

Construction of the underground section is expected to take about 64 months (5 years and 3 months). To this time must be added the months it will take for the Metro to put out to tender the design and construction of the underground section. At the moment, the most encouraging estimate is that there is a difference of more than 24 months between the construction of the tunnel and the works on line 3, which has been carried out by HPH Joint Venture since February.