Teleférico de Puerto Plata Reconstruction: What Changes by 2028

The Teleférico de Puerto Plata stopped carrying passengers on June 5, 2024, after technical studies concluded the system's safety could not be certified. On Saturday, October 3, 2026, the government formally started work on its replacement. That was twenty-eight months after the closure. The schedule calls for about eighteen months of construction, with the new system expected to open in the first quarter of 2028.

Measured from the last ride to the first new one, Loma Isabel de Torres will have gone close to four years without its cable car. The ceremony did not shorten that gap. It marked the point where the gap gets a contractor, a technical specification and an end date. The cable car returning in 2028 is also a different machine, with fewer and much larger cabins, a shorter ride and a capacity figure that can be measured against the city's busiest cruise days.

The Original Clock, and How Far It Slipped

When the closure was announced in 2024, the government said a replacement would take between eighteen months and two years. Counted from June 2024, that pointed to a reopening between late 2025 and mid-2026. Instead, the dates ran like this:

1. June 5, 2024. The Teleférico closes on safety grounds, and authorities say a new system will replace it.
2. January 2025. Hoy reports the cable car has been out of service for six months and that traffic on the mountain road has increased as a result.
3. May 19, 2025. Merchants and workers tied to the attraction stage a peaceful protest next to an official ceremony on Loma Isabel de Torres, where the government was switching on a new weather and aviation radar.
4. June 2025. The project is reported to still be in design, with technicians studying wind conditions and other factors before any tender. The government acknowledges the process has taken longer than planned.
5. March 30, 2026. Minister of the Presidency José Ignacio Paliza and Tourism Minister David Collado present the full rehabilitation, financed by MITUR and IDAC.
6. September 2026. Paliza announces work will start September 30, after the contract is awarded to Doppelmayr through a public tender. The start ceremony is later moved to October 3.

The international tender opened with a base amount of RD$1,280 million. Authorities now put the total investment at about US$22 million. The March presentation described it as more than US$20 million.

A Different Machine on the Same Line

The project is run by the Unidad para la Readecuación de Barrios y Entornos, known as URBE, together with Consorcio DOMA. That consortium pairs the Austrian cable-car maker Doppelmayr Seilbahnen GmbH with the Dominican builder Grupo Malespín. The route up the mountain stays the same. Almost everything that travels along it will be replaced: cables, drives, controls, safety mechanisms, electrical systems and stations.

The cabin and capacity figures come from the October 3 announcements. The ride-time reduction comes from the March presentation, which also committed to the European UNE-EN safety and maintenance standards and to stations with universal accessibility that keep the historic look. The cabin size changed between announcements. In March the stated figure was 50 passengers per cabin, and by October it was 55. The later number is the one to rely on.

The old system already had a history of interruptions before 2024. In 2021, a breakdown left 32 people stranded, and the cable car then stayed out of service for ten months. Paliza described the goals at the October ceremony as more safety, more capacity and better accessibility, while keeping the attraction's historic value.

The Number That Meets the Port

Ever since the cable car closed, Puerto Plata's cruise traffic has kept growing. On September 15, 2026, four ships called at the city on the same day, carrying more than 16,700 passengers between them. Two of them, Adventure of the Seas and Celebrity Beyond, docked at Taíno Bay with 6,914 passengers combined. The Autoridad Portuaria counted 800,680 visitors through Taíno Bay from January through August 2026 and projects about 1.22 million for the full year.

Compare those figures with the new system's rated capacity. At 430 passengers per hour in each direction, an eight-hour day of uninterrupted operation would carry about 3,440 people up the mountain. That is roughly half of what Taíno Bay alone handled on September 15. The new cable car can move far more people than the 18-passenger cabins could, but on the busiest days the line at the lower station will still be set by the cruise schedule.

Mayor Diomedes Roque García, known as Roquelito, said at the ceremony that the modernization would give the city an attraction "más seguro, accesible y preparado para recibir a una mayor cantidad de visitantes," meaning safer, more accessible and ready for more visitors.

The Families Who Carried the Gap

El Nacional estimates that about 200 families depend directly or indirectly on the cable car. The paper names merchants, vendors, guides and transport workers among those hit by the shutdown. At the May 2025 protest, group spokesman Vladimir Santana put the toll at about 500 direct and indirect jobs.

"Solo pedimos que nos permitan trabajar." All we ask is to be allowed to work.

The March 2026 plan includes renovating the vendors' plaza and states that merchants will not be displaced. The October coverage does not say how the plaza will operate while the stations are rebuilt, or whether any part of the lower-station area will be fenced off. Anyone who regularly buys from the stalls there is best served by asking the vendors directly.

The Road Is Still the Only Way Up

With the cable car out until 2028, the summit can only be reached by land. The route is the carretera turística that climbs from San Marcos to the Cristo Redentor and continues on to El Cupey and Gran Parada in Montellano. It is known locally as "la carretera de Felucho" because it was built in 2000, when Félix Jiménez was tourism secretary.

When authorities closed the cable car in June 2024, they promised the mountain would stay open by road. Their plan listed drainage and culvert work with spot paving between San Marcos and El Cupey, and resurfacing, a retaining wall and an emergency pull-off between El Cupey and the summit. Seven months later, in January 2025, Hoy described advanced deterioration made worse by rain-driven landslides. The paper said drivers needed four-wheel-drive vehicles and that "Obras Públicas en construcción" signs stood along the route.

In July 2025, the municipality reported a repair more than 95 percent complete on a drainage collapse along the main road into San Marcos. That repair covered the approach to the community, not the climb to the summit. No published report since then confirms that the summit section was resurfaced or reinforced as the 2024 plan described, and no current notice gives visitor hours or fees for the summit grounds.

The mountain is still a protected Monumento Natural, with its own administrator and park rangers under the Ministerio de Medio Ambiente. In early 2024, before the closure, rangers there helped rescue three hikers who had gotten lost on the mountain, searching areas that included Las Caobas and Río Violón. Until the cable car runs again, it makes sense to check road and trail conditions with the rangers before a trip to the Cristo Redentor, especially in a car without four-wheel drive.

Auburn Lucas follows Puerto Plata's public works and their effect on the city's daily life, from the mountain to the port. If you'd like our updates on the Teleférico's progress, along with private access to property on the north coast, choose Receive Exclusive Listings.