Contrary to the stand of the Santo Domingo Mayor in his opening words, the first guest speaker, Enrique Penalosa had strong words against the construction of the proposed metro and the island promoted by the Fernandez government as the solution to modernize Santo Domingo.
Enrique Penalosa, award-winning former mayor of Bogota and candidate to the presidency in Colombia, stated: “With what one kilometer of metro costs, we could make many parks for all the barrios of Santo Domingo,” he sentenced calling the plan for the metro an “imprudence.”
He said that the TransMilenio system in Bogota that cost US$250 million to build today serves 800,000 compared to the 320,000 users of the US$3.3 billion metro that Medellin chose to build. He said that the big difference is that metro will always need to be subsidized. He urged the Dominican government think the project over “very carefully”.
Penalosa was also very critical of the second Fernandez government mega project for the city ? the island to be built by private investors in front of the Malecon. He said that he sees the Malecon as gold in powder, when Dominicans are seeing it as a puddle. He said that “everyone is fascinated by water,” and urged instead that the sea-bordering Malecon be turned into a 7 km pedestrian way that would increase its value.
He said that water-fronting areas are magic places and specifically stated that these “should never be privatized for luxury hotels.”
“I think it is dangerous to be discussing that island, when it would deteriorate quality of life for the residents and the quality of the view,” he said. He highlighted that there is even the risk that it would dry up the waters. He stressed that a better solution is to turn the Malecon into a walkway and improve the front.
He was also very critical of the highways that have been built in front of the sea showing slides of the Las Americas Expressway as a major mistake, at a time when world around countries are giving new value to their waterfronts.