The Santo Domingo Metro and Cable Car system, generally referred to as “the Metro,” is a real people mover, a report in Listin Diario reveals. The system began during the administration of then President Leonel Fernandez when he attempted to create “little New York”. The Santo Domingo Metro was originally planned to handle 175,000 passengers per day and had 16 stations. Today, around 316,000 persons a day use the mass transportation services provided by the two lines. The base fare is the same original RD$20. The Metro is producing over RD$6 million every day.
Use varies with the day of the week, the weekend or a holiday. The Greater Santo Domingo metro lines operate from early in the morning until late at night. As is normal in such a mass transit system, over half of the passenger-use occurs during the weekly rush hours.
Over normal weekends, usage goes lower, to about 200,000 passengers per day. On holidays, demand drops to serve about 100,000 commuters.
The cable car portion of the system gets over 11,000 users per weekday and then falls off to over 9,000 on the weekends. On holidays, usage drops to around 6,000 per day.
On average, over 62 million people ride the Santo Domingo Metro system each year. This is the ten-year average.
Back in 2009, there were 16.6 million passengers. Use peaked in 2019 with over 105 million persons. The pandemic cut that number in half, but 2021 saw a rebound up to 72 million.
The Abinader administration is advancing work to double the capacity of Line 1 later this year. The government is working to extend Line 2 Metro service another 7.3 km to Los Alcarrizos, in northern Santo Domingo province by early 2024.
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Listin Diario
Metro Santo Domingo
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Diario Libre
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27 June 2022