Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan – Dominican Republic

SYSTRA was selected to carry out the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) for Greater Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.

In 2019, as part of the Mobilise your City programme financed by the French Development Agency (AFD) and the European Union (EU), a comprehensive study of mobility in Greater Santo Domingo was carried out by SYSTRA’s Consultancy teams, with local technical coordination from INTRANT and the municipalities. This plan is the result of a multi-sector dialogue conducted by INTRANT with all the parties concerned.

Better organisation of mobility to reduce congestion in the Dominican capital

The study revealed that the current transport systems in the city of Santo Domingo are the result of rapid, uneven and unregulated urbanisation. To solve these problems, the Dominican authorities made the ambitious decision to draw up an Urban and Sustainable Mobility Plan, based on a survey of residents’ journeys, the first to be carried out in 20 years.

With the support of digital planning tools, SYSTRA was able to define a structured plan and promote a strategy for the integrated development of urban mobility in order to maximise the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from transport. The aim is to reduce emissions by 50% by 2050.

From demand management to the coherence of public policies, the study was carried out following a participatory process in cooperation with local bodies and taking into consideration the opinions of representatives of the institutions, civil society and technical operators in place. The SUMP acts as a technical support for the definition of action plans and also aims to strengthen the decision-making capacity of local players.

Of the scenarios presented, Santo Domingo opted for the most ambitious, largely devoted to the development of a high-capacity public transport offer. Greater Santo Domingo is one of only 100 cities in the world to have defined and implemented a sustainable urban mobility plan.