An El Caribe newspaper editorial today points out that the Metropolitan Transport Authority recently announced that it will be restricting the 10,400 public transit vehicles in Santo Domingo (8,000 cars and 2,400 minibuses and buses) to inter-daily operation. The idea is to reduce bottlenecks, street congestion and save fuel by only allowing those vehicles to operate every second day. But on the other hand, the Office for the Regulation of Transport (OTTT) has announced the imminent importing of 5,000 vehicles including buses, jeeps, trucks, minibuses, microbuses and even the “taxis pollitos” or the yellow taxis that the PRD harshly criticized when initiated by the previous administration. Says El Caribe, “For the national economy, this operation will simply be a disaster because millions of dollars will be used to import new vehicles so that a similar amount of vehicles that are already here can be left off the streets every other day. “We believe the excuse is that half of the present fleet of public transport cars are scrap iron. While the government purchases vehicles and continues to hand them to the mafia that operates public transit, instead of allowing the private sector to operate urban transit with the efficiency of interurban service, all the citizenry will feel that the government is treating it as junk.” Former Minister of the Armed Forces, General Ramon Emilio Jimenez, is the coordinator of the Transport Commission handling the “Plan Renove”. It is not clear yet how the vehicles will be assigned.
