Traffic to Samaná increases by 15%, after shutting down the “shadow toll”

RD Vial assured that vehicle traffic circulating on 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 highway. Tourist Boulevard of the Atlantic 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.

Comparing the statistics for the first five months of 2021 from Autopistas del Nordeste, the concession company that was in charge of managing the stations, with the data from RD Vial from December 22 to May 17, 2022 to identify the flow of vehicles that crosses there after the “shadow toll” was eliminated.

In December 2021, President Luis 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, vans, 4X4 vehicles and family vans is 60 pesos at 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.