Lima’s distinctive Metro

I visited Lima’s Metro last week. It’s a very distinctive system, for a number of reasons.¹

Routes of the Metro and of the Metropolitano, Lima. Raw GIS data from OpenStreetMap.

[1] Lima’s Metro does not really go downtown, and it doesn’t come very close to Lima’s newer quasi-CBD in and around Miraflores and San Isidro either (see map). This is odd in that nearly all rail rapid transit systems, for reasons that are pretty clear, serve cities’ central business districts. Rail rapid transit, always expensive to build, is really only justified when there are large numbers of passengers, and, even in cities with weak CBDs,  there are still likely to be numerous jobs in government, finance, and tourism in the old downtown, and the largest passenger flows are most probably going to be to and from the CBD. Lima’s Metro comes close to the old Centro Histórico, but the nearest stations are more than two kilometers from the heart of the Centro, and this is an awkward distance to traverse. Jirón Junín, the shortest route between the Miguel Grau station and the Plaza Mayor, takes you along some blocks where (at least when I visited) there were more stray dogs than people; it’s a scary walk. There are buses along Avenida Grau that connect the station with the southern edge of the CBD, but they require an extra fare and quite a few minutes of passengers’ time, and of course you have to figure out an extraordinarily complicated bus system, largely run by private operators.

There do exist a few other Metro systems in the world that don’t go to a CBD, but they’re almost all exceptions that prove the rule. Bangkok’s Skytrain doesn’t serve the older CBD on the Chao Phraya River, but its two lines come together next to Siam Square, the effective center of Bangkok’s modern commercial life. In Miami, the Metro, as in Lima, only skirts the CBD, but it’s connected with Miami’s downtown via the Metromover. There’s also the case of San Juan’s Tren Urbano, which serves the newer commercial district Hato Rey but has never made it to the old city. This line is not generally considered to be a great success. It attracts fewer passengers than any other American rail rapid transit system except Cleveland’s,² which also serves only the edge of downtown. Lima’s Metro arguably has the poorest connection with its main commercial districts of any rail rapid transit system in the world.

Let me add that the fact that Lima’s Metro has attracted numerous passengers without serving its CBD very well does suggest that some of the received conceptions of how people move in cities may not be quite right—this appears to be an under-researched subject. It could be the case that the “desire lines” of people of modest income in Third World cities are quite different than those of middle-income people in North America and Europe. That is, these people could have less interest in travel to the CBD, since the jobs—and products—present there may not be available to them. One of the stops on the Metro where the largest number of people get on and off is Gamarra, the site of a truly enormous clothing market and of bus and van connections to many places. It may be a more important node for relatively poor people than the Centro Histórico.

Lima’s Metro, over Avenida Aviación.

[2] Lima’s Metro is entirely elevated. It’s even been claimed to be the world’s longest urban elevated railroad at 24 km (plus 10 km of surface tracks). (This claim is somewhat dubious.) Its status as an elevated railway is one of the chief reasons it does not serve the Centro Histórico. The line is nearly all built in the center of exceptionally wide streets and is very heavily engineered, in part to mitigate the area’s substantial seismic risks. Its heavy presence makes it a somewhat overbearing neighbor, and it would not have fit (or been very welcome) in the relatively narrow streets of the Centro Histórico or of places like Miraflores and San Isidro.

View from the Miguel Grau station, the closest station to the Centro Histórico.

[3] Lima’s Metro mostly serves modest neighborhoods. Many new Metro lines quite self-consciously serve a mix of districts. They do this in part to be politically attractive and to forestall accusations that their construction favors either the rich or the poor. Lima’s Metro was quite self-consciously built to serve, first, Villa El Salvador in the south, and then, when its general alignment was finally settled on, San Juan de Lurigancho in the north. Villa El Salvador and San Juan de Lurigancho are both huge settlements of (with some exceptions) poor or middle-income people. Villa El Salvador started life as a pueblo jóven (squatter settlement) and is famous for its local activists. San Juan de Lurigancho has a million people, few of whom are wealthy. “Public” transport at both ends of the lines was largely in private hands before the arrival of the Metro and mostly involved vans (“combis”) that travelled only when very full. Combi transport was (and is) neither rapid nor comfortable, and the Metro’s routing was in part determined by the very reasonable desire to improve transport for a large number of people.

The Metro does skirt the far edges of Miraflores and San Isidro, upscale residential neighborhoods and the centers of much of Lima’s modern commercial life. There are two or three stations within three or four kilometers of these neighborhoods, notably La Cultura and San Borja Sur. La Cultura, where the National Library and the Museo de la Nación (but hardly any residences) are located, is connected with San Isidro by freeway. There are bus routes to San Isidro, but the three-kilometer walk is not pleasant. I also walked from Miraflores to San Borja Sur station. The first part of this journey is fine. As in other big Latin American cities, the most bustling, pedestrian-friendly parts of Lima are upscale commercial/residential neighborhoods. But the last kilometer, past large single-family homes with three-meter-high walls topped by electric fences, is somewhat strange. The only other pedestrians were deliverymen, who were communicating with residents by intercom. The Metro does not have the same kind of easy relationship with its surrounding neighborhoods—and perhaps especially its well-off neighborhoods—that one would find in a European city. Even in the poorer neighborhoods, where there are more pedestrians, you often have to cross a major street to get to the station.

[4] The Metro took nearly thirty years to build. Construction was started in 1986, during a brief period of optimism about Peru’s future, and a small section of surface track at what is now the southern end of the line opened in 1990. Since it didn’t go anywhere very useful, it attracted few passengers. Work on the line practically ceased for twenty years, a period when Peru was experiencing out-of-control inflation, the Sendero Luminoso revolt, and other problems. Work resumed in 2009, and the southern two-thirds of the line were completed in an astonishing 18 months. The northern third, which had not even been started previously, opened 33 months later, in 2014, 28 years after Metro construction had begun.

The San Isidro Aramburú station on the Metropolitano BRT, in the middle of the Vía Expresa.

[5] The Metro has BRT competition. Besides finishing the Metro, Peru’s government took advantage of the good economic times of the early 21st century to build a bus rapid transit route, confusingly called the Metropolitano.³ Unlike the Metro, it serves the Centro Histórico, Miraflores, and San Isidro, running down the center of a freeway, the Vía Expresa, from south of the Centro Histórico to Barranco, a bit beyond Miraflores. This part of the route is genuine, high-quality BRT, resembling the major lines in Bogotá. The bus right-of-way is completely separate. It includes passing lanes, permitting express service. You pay with a smart card as you enter a station. North and south of the Vía Expresa, the Metropolitano still has its own right-of-way, and you still prepay your fare, but buses do have to contend with traffic lights. The Metropolitano has been drawing approximately as many riders as the Metro. The Metropolitano route, oddly, does not intersect with the Metro at any point.

The Gamarra station.

There seems to be a consensus that Lima’s Metro is a success. It has been attracting approximately 350,000 passengers a day on weekdays and Saturdays, more than had been predicted. This is a respectable figure for a single line in an urban area of medium density. Trains, unfortunately, run very full, but that of course is a sign of success, and surveys suggest that passengers are generally pleased. The fares, 1.50 soles (USD 0.45), cover something like two-thirds the cost of running the trains, so the subsidies required are not ruinous. Linea 1 is considered so successful that two additional lines are now under contract. Both will be subways and one will serve the Centro Histórico (the other line will reach the Airport). Linea 2 will cross Linea 1 at Miguel Grau and the Metropolitano at its Estación Central, thus improving connectivity enormously. Additional routes, including lines to Miraflores and San Isidro, are on the drawing boards. If and when these lines are completed Lima’s Metro will be much more like Latin America’s other major rail rapid transit systems.