Santo Domingo, whose population is two million and growing, is bursting at the seams. Its roadways are clogged with buses, private cars, bicycles and rundown taxis.
Dominicans are singing about their subway. They are arguing about it. No trains are in place yet, not to mention rails or turnstiles, and the Santo Domingo Metro has become as hot a topic of conversation as the fate of Dominicans’ favourite baseball team, the New York Yankees.
As of now, the subway is a hole in the ground, a mountain of concrete, a stretch of tunnels where workers are racing to meet President Leonel Fernández’s construction deadline of early next year, in time for the presidential election in May, in which he hopes to win a new term. Meanwhile, the debate about the merits of the project is as intense as the flurry of subterranean shoveling and welding and hammering.
Only the second underground rail system in the Caribbean Santo Domingo’s subway project is, to some, a colossal exercise in bad judgment. To others, though, it is a forward-thinking solution to the capital’s serious traffic congestion. Santo Domingo, whose population is two million and growing, is bursting at the seams. Its roadways are clogged with buses, private cars, bicycles and rundown taxis. Add the occasional horse cart for a snarling, slow-moving mess.
The initial $470 million estimate of the cost of the project has spiralled to nearly $700 million. Some suspect that will end up costing far more. In a country with deeply rooted poverty, infuriating power outages and social indicators a notch below those of Sri Lanka, opponents say there are better things the country could have done with the money. The project, announced in 2004, calls for almost 15 kilometres of tracks and 16 stops, 10 of them underground. It will run from the northern part of the city, across the Isabela River, to the downtown, near the coast. More lines are planned for the years ahead.
The subway is not the first to draw criticism here. Some are already comparing it with the giant 10-story cross built in 1992 to honour Columbus. That construction drew street protests as Dominicans, in economic crisis at the time, denounced a price tag of about $100 million. When a wall went up around the monument, it was called the “wall of shame” by locals, who regarded it as an attempt by the government to hide the dire living conditions of the surrounding neighbourhoods from visitors.
The government only turns on the monument’s giant strobe lights, which project a giant cross in the sky, on special occasions, because neighbourhood people resent such an extravagance when their lights are frequently out. Still, the strong local opposition to the Columbus monument has waned, and officials expect the same to happen with the Metro. Monsignor Agripino Núñez Collado, a religious leader active in civic affairs once apologised for arriving an hour late to a function. He said he was stuck in traffic. What better endorsement for a subway project than that? But as he spoke, the palace lights briefly went off, a reminder of the power cuts that are a regular part of life in Santo Domingo. How can a country that cannot keep its lights on possibly keep the trains running on time, critics say?
In fact, the engineers have an answer to that question. The project includes an independent generating station to ensure that time saved by avoiding traffic jams above ground is not wasted sitting around in the dark down below.
