Enrique Penalosa, former mayor of Bogota, who visited for the Santo Domingo 2015 Congress, told El Caribe that the city of Santo Domingo needs parks, wide sidewalks, walkways, more cafes in public spaces, more attention to its poor barrios, bicycle routes all around and more trees. “The tourists are not going to come to go to malls like those in Miami, that is not going to attract anyone,” he told the newspaper reporter. Penalosa told city planners that there is no way to improve transport if the use of the individual automobile is not restricted. “If we are thinking that some magic solution like a metro will solve the problem of the bottlenecks we are dreaming, because there is no one who is going to leave his car to get on mass transport, and if it is a subway, then much less because subways give a feeling of insecurity,” he said.
He says that Santo Domingo is a small enough city to be able to implement cheaper solutions than a metro. Penalosa said that contrary to estimates of US$32 million the kilometer proposed by promoter Diandino Pena, the real cost per kilometer is more likely to be US$120 million, not taking into consideration the high subsidies that will be needed all along. “The only way to resolve the public transport is to have several lines of high quality buses, in his opinion. He says even if they build the metro, these will be necessary.