RD Vial assured that the traffic of vehicles that circulates through the Autopista del Nordeste or Autovía de Samaná increased significantly by 15% after the Government assumed, on December 23, 2021, the administration of the highway, in addition to the Boulevard Turístico del Atlántico road that leads to Las Terrenas.
During the five months, approximately, that the Government has administered the tolls, the traffic through the three highway stations went from 2.8 million vehicles between January to May 2021 to more than 3.3 million for the same period this year.
Free Journal compared the statistics of the first five months of 2021 of the Autopistas del Nordeste, a concessionaire company that was in charge of managing the stations, with the data of DR Road from December 22 to May 17, 2022 to identify the flow of vehicles that crosses there after the “shadow toll”.
By December 2021 the president Louis Abinader ordered a 20% reduction in the price of tolls on the Santo Domingo-Samaná highway to encourage more people to use said road artery.
The current toll rate for category one that corresponds to cars, trucks, 4X4 vehicles and family vans is 60 pesos in the first station; in the second, 200 pesos; in the third, 200 pesos and in the fourth (which corresponds to the Boulevard Turístico del Atlántico) 400 pesos.
In this sense, RD Vial indicates that the traffic of the first five months of the year represents 47% of the total number of vehicles that used the tolls of the Autopista del Nordeste throughout 2021, when the number of cars that passed through the stations was just over seven million.
When comparing the data of the vehicles that passed through the tolls in 2019, which was a pre-pandemic year, with 2021, after the country came out of social confinement to avoid COVID-19 infections, an increase of 44 is reflected. %, going from 4.9 million to seven million for an increase of two million, according to figures from the previous concessionaire of the project and from RD Vial as the current institution that administers tolls at the national level.
boulevard
As for the El Catey toll that gives access to the Boulevard Turístico del Atlántico, a section that leads to Las Terrenas, the records of RD Vial indicate that so far this year at least 222,158 means of land transport have circulated along this section, representing a 54% of last year’s flow (414,285).
collections
During the December-May period, the months that RD Vial is in charge of tolls, the Government has collected 593 million pesos in the four stations that are in that area of the country and they estimate to reach 1,473 million at the end of this 2022, with the passage of 8,732 vehicles along the Samaná highway.
The Dominican government reached a “friendly” agreement to put an end to the concession contract for the Autopista del Nordeste (samaná highway) through which the State would only contribute 410 million dollars of the 1,900 million dollars that it had pending payment until its completion, that is, about 1,500 million dollars less than what was owed for the subsidy called “shadow toll”.
