any metro updates?

amparocorp

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Aug 11, 2002
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i haven't seen anything on this board about the metro lately and since it's been up and running for a few months now, what's up? are the stations being kept clean? are they dependable? ridership up or down? has it helped traffic congestion any? any turnstyle jumpers?
 
R

rockero

Guest
WOW how are things now going on The Metro??? What are all the lines here??? Whats The Hour of operations??? When is The Train thats going to go from Santo get ready to Santiago that they were planning???? Is anything on that up yet??? OK Then Keep us updated on all this,,,Rockero....
 

SteveS

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Apr 15, 2008
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If you live on or close to Maximo Gomez, and need to go further down Maximo Gomez, great system....

If you live anywhere except here, and need to go anywhere but Maximo Gomez, its a waste of time.

Maybe in 10 years when they finally complete all the lines it could become a mediocre underground.... thats if they don't go bankrupt/run out of money first, which is a big possibility....
 

bigbird

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May 1, 2005
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If you live on or close to Maximo Gomez, and need to go further down Maximo Gomez, great system....

If you live anywhere except here, and need to go anywhere but Maximo Gomez, its a waste of time..............

It is a great ride but..............for use on Maximo Gomez only.

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bigbird

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May 1, 2005
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How much is the fare? What are the hours of operation?

Information from: Dominican Republic Transportation 2

Metro de Santo Domingo, Rep?blica Dominicana

The Santo Domingo Metro Trains run from 6AM to 10PM daily. The entire ride takes about 20 minutes from the beginning to the end of the line.

The newest addition to public mass transit system in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic is the Metro. It is our very own subway system inaugurated January 2009. There are 16 stops along the route of which six are elevated and ten are underground. It has 19 three-car trains traveling at maximum speed of 100 miles per hour along the 14.5 km/ 9.6-mile line.

This subway was the idea of President Leonel Fern?ndez to help with the heavy traffic and road congestion. The building of the Metro was very controversial at first but when it was finished being built and ready for use the Dominican people flocked to the opening. Taking the ride from the lst stop in Villa Mella to the last in La Feria. There are five more lines in the planning with the second line under construction now (2009).

All in all the trains seem to be running smoothly. They are very clean, quiet, fast and very organized. A ride costs $20 pesos for a 1-way trip. They sell a Metro Card/ Tarjeta Metrocard that you can add money to use for fast entry or you can pay per ride at the fast moving ticket windows.
 

bigbird

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May 1, 2005
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Metro Photos

Centro de los H?roes Station at La Feria:

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On a Sunday afternoon in late March entire families came out to take a ride on the newly opened Metro.

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There is a very nice photo display of the construction stages at the LaFeria station.

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bigbird

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May 1, 2005
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Metro Photos (continued)

It is just under a twenty minute ride from the Joaqu?n Balaguer Station on M?ximo G?mez Ave. [Ministry of Education] to the Mam? Ting? Station at Hermanas Mirabal Ave. and Charles de Gaulle Ave. in Villa Mella.


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Inside the Metro Train as it approaches the Villa Mella Station, the last stop.

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The elevated stations north of rio Isabela.


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There is a lot of construction currently going on at the Villa Mella Station to beautify the surroundings.

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PICHARDO

One Dominican at a time, please!
May 15, 2003
13,280
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Santiago de Los 30 Caballeros
Yeah! Let's crunch some figures here about the SD Metro:

Tren Urbano de Puerto Rico (since it's the only rail system that can be parallel to ours for comparisons):

Lines: 1

Stations: 16

Length: 17.2 km

Cost: US $2.28 Billion

Avg Daily Ridership: 36,500 (weekdays only)(2008)

Fare: US$ 1.50

Entered Service: Dec 17 2004

Population Service(metro): 2,509,007 (2007)

Support Transport Infrastructure (for exclusive Metro rider access): Extensive



The Santo Domingo Metro:

Lines: 1

Stations: 16

Length: 14.5 km

Cost: US $800 Million

Avg Daily Ridership: 60,000+ (Daily avg)

Fare: US$ 0.56

Entered Service: Jan 30 2009

Population Service(metro): 2,253,437 (2006)

Support Transport Infrastructure (for exclusive Metro rider access): None (8/14/2009)



The Train Urbano of Puerto Rico is heavily subsidized by the PR gov and the US federal funds. The Santo Domingo Metro is also heavily subsidized as the ridership has not been effectively met, since no transport infrastructure has been made available to allow over 70% of potential riders to make use of the system.

Most riders too distant from the service must pay at least two fares each way to reach the line in service. Fares are not deductible or compounded with the fare of the mass transit system, like in PR and everywhere the same system is used.

Revenues for the SD Metro per week are around RD$ 9,000,000.00 + from direct rider fares generated. A reported subsidy of RD$10,000,000.00 per day is a fallacy that is both financially impossible and unsupported...

Now we have a geologist expert trained Metrologist expert in the news, the same one that assured the public that once the Metro was put into service the trains would fall to the ground due to the lack of proper ground studies for the elevated trams and collapses in the tunnels.

Ridership in the DR Metro continues to grow and once the support buses come into service is bound to double or more it's users. As riders will only pay one fare on the buses to reach the train and make use of it on the same fare. Mass transit goes beyond one train and encompasses other systems of transportation as well.

The SD Metro second line is underway today...

On a footnote: The SD Metro uses the latest generation of electrical systems, where even a few passengers difference makes the use of power different, unlike is said about using the same energy when empty or full.

In fact, when empty it uses less energy to roll and when full it uses the weight to regenerate electricity on breaking as well...

The actual cost of running the SD Metro is less than it produces on a given month with the actual ridership, what's being subsidized is the cost of repayment for the original investment and support systems for the same. Think of all that security, cleaning and maintenance that goes into keeping the system operational and safe. Those costs are subsidized by the Gov, just like any other mass transit systems in the world are today.


The Santiago - Santo Domingo HVT is going to be built along line 2 of the SD Metro. Each system complements the other...
 

bigbird

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May 1, 2005
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.......The SD Metro second line is underway today......

Where?

It would be nice to be able to catch the Metro on Gomez and connect to another Metro running up Churchill or under 27 de febrero to access the different shopping areas.
 

bigbird

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May 1, 2005
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What would be nice..............

It would be helpful to have a publication available listing points of interest, shopping centers, mercados, etc. located within easy walking distance of every Metro stop.
 

SteveS

Member
Apr 15, 2008
297
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It looks very nice. Do people like it?

Those who live on Maximo Gomez think its fantastic.

It would be helpful to have a publication available listing points of interest, shopping centers, mercados, etc. located within easy walking distance of every Metro stop.

Plaza Lama, Maximo Gomez

Supermercado Nacional, Maximo Gomez

Marriot Courtyard, Maximo Gomez

Unversity APEC, Maximo Gomez

and if Maximo Gomez isn't your cup of tea... you can go to two other unversities...

UASD and Dominico Americana


Wow........ I can get all over the city on this thing.............


(forgive my sarcasm but even in the 10 year plan I am at least 40 minutes walk in an average 30deg heat from the nearest station to access the city)..

I don't mean to pull this project down, but please, spend the money on eduction and the electricity debt of US$700m before you try this....otherwise we're just spending our tax pesos on more Casa de Campo villas, and Black Toyota Prados.......
 

PICHARDO

One Dominican at a time, please!
May 15, 2003
13,280
893
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Santiago de Los 30 Caballeros
According to Pichardo's numbers, the numbers from the above article in HOY are incorrect. With one line costing $800 Million US, it reminds me that the electricity problem in the DR would be greatly helped by $700 Million that is owed to the generators. I still believe the Metro is a fiasco and will continue to be one.

Did you even paid attention to the source of the figures used in the article???

The actual cost of the SD Metro is a fact corroborated by the official releases of financial details from the government project to congress (where the cheques and loans where approved).

The electricity problem in the DR is not a secret, well maybe to many expats here. The current collapse since well after the 1980's comes about from the inception of the service under Trujillo. The amount of freeloaders and demand skyrocketed and the price tab is unsustainable.

The problem is not capacity of generation but the unpaid chunk that's shouldered by the gov and paying clients.

The fix is very simple, as the international funding sources provided:
Better management of the grid and eliminate the freeloaders, while installing the meters needed to collect actual usage and not one based on anybody's guess...

The Metro a Fiasco?!?!? Are we to say then that every mass transit system in use today (Metros) are just fiascos? Is it even possible to say one would go about NYC metro area driving around, rather than using the subway?

Maybe you have a better solution to going from one of Japan's prefectures Ku to the other without having to sit in traffic for the better part of the day???

A Metro mass transit system is the best solution for a city like Santo Domingo and the traffic problems it faces and will continue to face as it develops into a denser city.
 

PICHARDO

One Dominican at a time, please!
May 15, 2003
13,280
893
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Santiago de Los 30 Caballeros
Where?

It would be nice to be able to catch the Metro on Gomez and connect to another Metro running up Churchill or under 27 de febrero to access the different shopping areas.

tuneladora.jpg


The machinery for the line 2 is being put in place in the locations targeted to start digging the tunnels. The complete phase 1 of the second line will be underground.

Two machines will dig at the same time from both ends, as the goal is to have the stations primed as soon as the tunnels are dug in. The stations are the most time consuming aspects of the project.

On a related note, since the stations already built for line 1 used a copy system. The stations for line 2 will be built using the same layouts and will result in huge savings for engineering costs in relation to that.

Line 2 is aimed for an operational date of 2012. The Santiago - Santo Domingo HVT is going to start as soon as the station on the western end of line 2 is finished.

Phase 2 of the line 2 will start as soon as the first machine ends the East to West tunnel.
 

PICHARDO

One Dominican at a time, please!
May 15, 2003
13,280
893
113
Santiago de Los 30 Caballeros
I agree that a mass transit system is very important to big cities. In the same breath I personally could care less about big cities such as Santo Domingo ( or New York City) other than when they take money away from more important issues. Some would say eduction and I would say electricity are much more important.

There are other more economical solutions than the Pharaonic underground system being built as we speak in Santo Domingo. It is a point where others that support the Metro and I will have to agree to disagree.


You could list them here:

#1:________________

#2:________________

#3:________________

etc...

A solution for the actual situation is not a solution to a constant growing problem, as the city will undoubtedly become denser each decade after the last.

So far a mass transit system like the Metro has been found to be the ONLY feasible solution, to a problem that never stops expanding.

What? Put more buses around the city? Create a bus only lane all around the streets? Ban private cars not carrying more than 2 people from traffic?

All those and more ideas (solutions) have been tried and found to serve for about a decade or so, until after the volume became too much for the ideas to work their wonders any longer.

Adding more traffic is not a long term solution...

NYC, LONDON and JAPAN would come to a grinding halt, if they needed to move the people in their Metro systems unto the streets...

We don't want more horizontal expansion of housing eating away the green areas near metropolitan zones. We need to think vertical and with a right mixture of mass transit, able to meet demand by adding more train sets on a need basis.

The SD Metro was built to handle over 200,000 riders, per line, per day, using the actual three car configuration. All stations were built with the capacity to meet a six car configuration and traffic within the infrastructure of over 500,000 riders per line, per day. The stations were also engineered to accommodate enlargement to meet future expansion when needed to 9 cars per train; again rising the rider ship to over 700,000 per day, per line.

That's without even touching the present traffic timetables from the circulation patterns. Our train system is built to eliminate human error and drive via fully automatic computer guidance the entire network. That means that trains can operate between less than a minute from each other, safely.


Think that the riders per day, per line would be tripled or more without any potential danger for disasters...

If the metropolitan area serviced by our Metro became a 10 million + city, the actual system would be capable of offering the best route to over 20% of the population during rush hour per line.

You want to see an efficient Metro system? Take a ride in Line 1 of the SD Metro and judge for yourself the value it brings to the metro population of the city.

After all, this is only the first line of the larger system. I don't know if you can take the time to fully understand two things in your ill based opinions:

#1- The investment made in the Metro by the gov, wouldn't make any difference if taken and put into the electrical sector. As a matter of fact, the electrical sector gulps down more money than the Metro could ever seek to take away from the gov.
The problem with the grid is not about dumping money into building new plants or upgrading the grid, but changing how we bill and who's going to get their cables cut for non payment.
For a political party the solution to that problem is political suicide with their voting masses of freeloaders...

#2- Investing the money into education... Are you so naive to think that ANY foreign financial institution would gladly extend a credit line to fund education in the DR?????????? Where do you think the money to repay the debt would come from???????? The funds for the SD Metro were issued by the financial institutions with backing from their perspective nations to open nee contracts for their companies and goods abroad. Even most of the material to be used was pre-conditioned to be purchased from the foreign nations where the loans were extended to the DR.

Go and try to ask for millions in loans to fund a nice education make over for the DR, from the same channels and see how far or how much you can get...

Stop talking nonsense repeated by a geologist turned Metro expert, or by thinking that somehow the transit unions of the DR would change their ways one day...

It took NYC over 100 years to have the puny old subway it owns today, with the clang! Clang! Clang! of the wheels at every roll and the smells that turn your stomach inside out. Think that it has 368 km of tracks built over a 100 years span; the SD Metro would be over 100 km in less than 3 decades alone.

By the time Line 3 becomes operational, the train cars will be manufactured in the DR for a long time. Already we have local industry preparing to be the main suppliers of the rails for our expansions.
 

bigbird

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May 1, 2005
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.........Phase 2 of the line 2 will start as soon as the first machine ends the East to West tunnel.

That is some digging machine. It looks more like a rocket ship!

Let me guess? Line 2 will run east to west under the center of 27 de febrero connecting with line 1 at Maximo Gomez?