Current urban mobility challenges in Santo Domingo
Located in the Caribbean region, Santo Domingo is the administrative, economic and political capital of Dominican Republic. With a population estimated at more than 3,5 million inhabitants, representing one third of the total country population, and with a projection of 4,4 million in 2030, Santo Domingo has known an exponential demographic growth. The lack of urban planning along the omnipresence of motorized vehicles has resulted into a very difficult mobility situation for its inhabitants. The city is now facing real mobility challenges with a growing congestion that has been exponential in the past few years. These issues are worsened by an obsolete vehicle fleet (75% of the vehicles are more than 15 years old), a limited public transport system, a lack of parking spaces taking over the streets and as well as defected drainage system in a country regularly affected by severe weather events.
The public transport system remains largely relying on informal shared taxis (carro-conchos), with an estimated fleet of 19 000 units. Since 2004, the Government has established a strategy for mass rapid transit (MRT) development and implemented and inaugurated a first metro line in 2008 and a second one in 2013. This second line was then extended in 2018 to cross river Ozama and reach the eastern, less privileged districts of city. The MRT system has known an exponential success and use since its opening and represents now almost 10% of modal share of the public transport system.
In this context, the main challenges in terms of mobility identified by Dominican authorities are the need to develop and strengthen (i) an integrated public transport system, (ii) integration of mobility planning with land use, (iii) regulation of private vehicle parking, (iv) non-motorised transport policies and infrastructure, (v) intelligent transport system to control and regulate the traffic.
MobiliseYourCity support to Santo Domingo
MobiliseYourCity provided support to the National Institute for Transit and Land Transportation (INTRANT), and Santo Domingo municipalities, to develop a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) for the Great Santo Domingo.
The SUMP development was funded by the European Union and was implemented with the support of the Agence Française de Développement.
The process started with the organization of Mobilise Days in October 2017 and was achieved in September 2019 with the adoption of the SUMP by a high level Steering Committee gathering local and national authorities.
The SUMP entails an ambitious action plan with numerous investment projects and policy measures which, once implemented, shall lead to an increase of 33% in public transport access for Santo Domingo inhabitants by 2030, an average reduction of 20 minutes of daily travel time and an average annual reduction of GHG emissions of 20%. Key projects proposed by the SUMP to develop a wider integrated public transport system are (i) development of BRT lines, (ii) creation of cable-car feeder lines, (iii) extension of existing metro line 2.