The Director of Urban Transit for the National District (i.e., Santo Domingo and environs) attributed the principal cause of problems with traffic in the capital’s to the plethora of organizations charged with regulating it. Speaking at a seminar titled "Transportation in the Dominican Republic, "Deligne Ascencion enumerated seven entities authorized to regulate the use of the city’s streets. In addition to his own office, these are the Santo Domingo Technical Office of Street Transit, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Metropolitan Office of Bus Service, National Police Department’s Transit Office, General Directorate of Street Transit, and the Red Cross (in emergency situations). These overlapping jurisdictions are responsible for a waste of resources, time, and manpower, according to Ascencion. Other root causes of SD’s traffic snarls are the unplanned concentration of the city within just 20 square kilometers, poor distribution of governmental offices which cluster together in just two densely trafficked neighborhoods, the concentration of 50% of the nation’s vehicles in the 3.5% of the country’s geography that comprises the National District. As solutions, Ascencion and other seminar speakers proposed unification and centralization of traffic control, decentralization of government offices, restriction of routes and hours for use of the streets by heavy vehicles.
