VERÓN-PUNTA CANA — One of the Dominican Republic’s most high-profile tourism destinations is facing a spiraling transportation crisis that threatens its long-term economic viability, according to local senator Rafael Barón Duluc. The sitting legislator has issued an urgent warning that persistent traffic congestion in the Punta Cana region has surged to catastrophic levels, outstripping even the chronic gridlock that plagues the capital city of Santo Domingo.
Duluc detailed that kilometer-long backlogs have become a daily reality across high-traffic corridors, including the Verón-Punta Cana district and central downtown Punta Cana. The severity of the worsening situation has reached such a breaking point that long-term residents and local business operators are actively evaluating moving their homes and operations to less congested regions of the country.
The senator highlighted stark changes in travel times that underscore the scope of the problem. Journeys between Punta Cana International Airport, one of the busiest air hubs in the Caribbean, and adjacent beachfront resorts once took roughly 10 minutes to complete. Today, the same trip can stretch to 40 minutes, and in many cases, a full hour during morning and evening peak travel windows.
Even the region’s core tourist zones, which are the economic engine of the entire province, have become gridlocked to the point that public solutions failed to materialize. As a result, Duluc confirmed, the private tourism sector was forced to self-fund the construction of a new highway overpass to alleviate just a small portion of the persistent bottlenecks.
The legislator threw his support behind recent public remarks from prominent tourism industry leader Frank Rainieri, who drew attention to the region’s crumbling infrastructure and systemic traffic failures. Duluc emphasized that Rainieri’s concerns are not overstated — they are fully legitimate and rooted in on-the-ground reality. He further stressed that the crisis is not an isolated issue limited to La Altagracia province; instead, it must be addressed as a national problem tied to decades of inadequate urban planning and the explosive, unregulated growth of one of the country’s most important tourism hubs.