Badalona City Council will renew the mobility ordinance that must regulate low emission zones (ZBE) because it considers that the current regulations lack the essential elements and could lead to complaints and appeals against the municipal administration. For this reason, the mayor, Xavier García Albiol, has commissioned a new ordinance in the Metropolitan Area of ??Barcelona and will suspend the current one at the next ordinary plenary session.
The ordinance in force, as explained yesterday by the mayor, accompanied by the councilor for Mobility, Daniel Gracia, does not have “elementary documents” to be applied, such as the economic report, the social report and the environmental studies. These shortcomings would cause, according to the batlle, an avalanche of resources that “could be very expensive for the City Council”.
The new regulations that will regulate the ZBE in Badalona must include a study on the scope of application of road restrictions. “There was no technical study, it was a whim of the editor”, said Albiol, that 90% of the Badaloní territory was affected by the low emissions. The Badalón government will also require the AMB to quantify the possible exemptions to be applied in the new regulations and gave as an example the bonuses for a precarious family situation. In the same way, it will also require the deadline to start the application of sanctions, which is initially estimated for January 1, 2027. Another unknown is whether the Generalitat, holder of the C-32 highway, also will apply the ZBE to the road that crosses Badalona.
Albiol harshly criticized the Central Government because he considers that with the application of the ZBEs it has not been “accurate and neat”. In this sense, he rejects the fact that Badalona City Council can apply bonuses to citizens affected by road restrictions. “In Badalona there are 40,000 affected vehicles”, of which 16,000 do not have an environmental label and nearly 25,000 have the B badge. “Bonifying them all is unfeasible”, pointed out Daniel Gracia, who rejected the concession of aid to acquire a new vehicle, since in any case “they would have to leave the State”.
Other cases to be studied are those of elderly people, who have limited driving ability over time and cannot “be forced to change cars” if they stop driving after two or three years.
Another of the breaches that, according to the government of Badalona, ??its predecessors of the quadripartite made is the obligation to promote an information campaign for all citizens about the ZBE to make known the possible effects and how to manage them. “A reasonable period of adaptation is needed for the residents to become aware of it and adapt their personal situation”, claimed Albiol.
Currently, despite the initial controversy raised between the Minister for the Ecological Transition and Xavier García Albiol when he announced the imposition of the ZBE moratorium in Badalona, ??in which Teresa Ribera even threatened to go to the courts, the City Council has already installed 70% of the cameras and information panels, to avoid losing the 2.5 million that the State transferred to it from European aid. Despite this, the mayor summarizes the management of ZBEs in Spain as “a mess in which local councils have not been taken into account”. He adds that “it was a very poorly conceived regulation”, so he calls for “a more comfortable framework to apply the ZBE”.
