San Pedro to Ban Large Trucks in Town Core to Ease Traffic Congestion Starting April 2025

In hopes of alleviating an increase in traffic congestion on La Isla Bonita, the San Pedro Town Council will soon prohibit large trucks from operating in the town. Last month, the council passed a resolution that will no longer allow trucks carrying construction materials and containers to travel within the island’s core. The law comes into effect next April and seeks to resolve the concerns of residents who are often forced to wait in snaky lines during peak hours. Love News spoke with Mayor Gualberto Nunez about the decision and how the council convinced business owners to have construction supplies and freight moved by boat. 

Gualberto “Wally” Nunez, Mayor of San Pedro Town: “We inherited so many issues with traffic and the traffic control committee has been trying to address all of these issues and it has been quite an amount of issues that we have been dealing with. One of them is definitely the trucks, the truck issue is that there has been complaints all over from you’d say residents, tourists, everybody on the island has been complaining but we have tried to work it out with different companies because in a way it does affect the council itself because we need the material as well to be able to fix some of these roads and we had a huge project which was the paving of most of these residential areas. So we had to get material all over town so it has been affecting in different ways. However the council decided that since we are about to finish with the paving of most of these residential areas and the other material that is being used is to fill privately we have decided that we will be banning these trucks from the town core but we’re giving them ample time to be able to make the necessary changes. We know that two of these main companies or the bigger companies that do the transportation of this material they are working on getting their barges so that they can barge the material through the back which is the lagoon side and they will have the services available for other truckers to be able to use the barge service which would be from the Northern area to the area around the port, the marina that we have here at the back. So that would alleviate the traffic problem that we have in the town core.”

Nunez went on to explain that residents will be able to apply for special permits to operate large trucks in the town under certain conditions. He also noted that while the decision was recently announced it had been in the pipeline for some time. 

Gualberto “Wally” Nunez, Mayor of San Pedro Town: “That will be depending on the time and they would need escort service from the council and that will be not something that we will just be giving out a permit every day or to anybody just because. It would have to be something that is justified and that we see the need that they would have to come through town. For now we are putting this for the large trucks delivering the material and if you notice on our post we also have the containers because these containers also create a traffic problem when they’re being brought into town. So they would need to offload whatever cargo they’re bringing at the barge site and bring them down with smaller trucks into town. We want the public to know that we are working on this. It hasn’t fallen on deaf ears. We are working on this since day one trying to find a solution and because of the works that we had on the roads is the reason why it has been delayed and it’s not because we haven’t been listening but it’s because we had so much work to do that we needed the trucks to be on the area.”

Nunez added that other measures, including the relocation of the island’s waters taxis, will further relieve traffic congestion in the town.