Do you live in Santo Domingo currently or somewhere else? The project is not about increasing traffic to the area itself but rather more about attracting a higher income demographic to the area. The Zona Colonial district itself will remain pedestrian friendly like in European cities which restrict vehicular traffic in the historic centers.

They've already invested more than 100 million dollars for this project, and plan on investing 900 million dollars more. That whole "remozamiento" they,ve been doing for like a decade now is a part of that. The marina de guerra was officially moved in 2016-2017. Look up MegaProyecto SanSousci, they have a clear vision of what the area should look like. That's why they're moving lower income people into those housing projects.

Whether this will work or not is anyone's guess, but the money and investments are already there. Sometimes what seem like terrible idea can work, just look at what Frank Rainieri did with a tropical jungle in La Altagracia. You just need people with a certain level of ambition, intelligence, and creativity to make things work.

Right now Santo Domingo is a very strange city in the fact that most of it's commercial activity in concentrated inland, while it's coastal and waterfront areas are relatively neglected and dilapidated. So the authorities want to change that and make that whole area a place of prime real estate like you see in other Latin American cities, were lower income people live inland while that better areas in the coast, which is the norm in most parts of the world.