Geographer Jose Ramon Martinez Batlle says that when discussing the advisability of constructing the Cibao-Santiago highway, what needs to be questioned is the justification of this use of public funds. He says however that since the Medina government has been emphatic about the construction of the new north-south link, the focus needs to be placed on the better alternatives. He says this should be through Constanza, to make the most of roads that already exist and avoid harming national park areas. This route would be 167km long of which 26km would need to be repaired, and another 46km built. He says it would hardly affect forest areas or protected areas and would link communities with high poverty levels.
Martinez Batlle describes the government proposal to build the road by way of Juan de Herrera-Los Ramones as “ill-fated”. He said many more kilometers of road would have to be built, including a minimum of 20km through forest areas in the mountains, especially in the Loma La Sidra and the south side of Los Ramones. He says this will affect the Armando Bermudez and Manolo Tavarez Justo national parks and the Alto Mao forestry reserve. “Of course we do not know exactly what the overall damage will be, because they are being very tight-lipped in their handling of this case,” he writes in his blog.
Furthermore, the tourism associations of Constanza are recommending the Constanza link. Rafael Collado of the Constanza Cluster and the Constanza Development Association says that a route through Constanza would provide at least three connections to the south. Other figures expressing their public support for the alternative route through Constanza include former Central Bank governor Bernardo Vega, engineers Osiris de Leon and Teodoro Tejada, radio businessman Teo Veras, economist Eduardo Garcia Michel, and La Vega province legislators.
The Sociedad Ecologica del Cibao (Soeci), Luis Carvajal and Eleuterio Martinez of the Academy of Sciences, Reynaldo Peguero of the Santiago Strategic Plan and Mario Tejada of the Ministry of Environment say that a feasibility study should be carried out prior to the start of the construction of the road announced by Public Works Minister Gonzalo Castillo. They were speaking during a panel discussion moderated by journalist Juan Bolivar Diaz at the Universidad Abierta para Adultos in Santiago over the weekend of 11-12 May.
www.geografiafisica.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/carretera_cibao_sur_02.pdf