The delegate of Urban Planning, Environment and Mobility of the Madrid City Council, Borja Carabante, said this Wednesday that the City Council does not foresee “any other” restrictive measures for vehicles in low emission zones (ZBE) beyond those already announced, so cars with environmental label B will be able to continue circulating in the capital.
This is what Carabante expressed on the third day of the Wake Up Spain 2024 symposium, organized by El Español, Invertia and Disruptores, to a question about whether the City Council plans to include B vehicles in the restrictions of low-emission zones.
“We do not plan to carry out any modification of the ordinance that incorporates new restrictions, because the current restrictions allow us to comply with the European (air quality) directive. Therefore, we are satisfied with these measures, because they have achieved those objectives,” said Carabante.
According to the data it has offered, only “2.3 percent of all vehicles circulating” in Madrid do not have a label (those known as A), compared to “23 percent of the national average.”
“This allows Madrid to have 6 percent of Zero-emission vehicles, well above the national average, and to be the first capital to surpass Eco vehicles over B vehicles,” explained the delegate, and reiterated that the The City Council does not plan to carry out any other restriction measures “because the ones we have are already sufficient.”
Carabante has defended that Madrid does not consider the ZBEs a “limiting element” of circulation, but rather “an instrument to promote the necessary renewal of our fleet”, and has highlighted that the ZBEs in Madrid “are progressive so that citizens and companies can adapt to the restrictions and that the focus has been placed on the most polluting vehicles, those known as A”.
Likewise, “alternatives” have been provided, such as free bus lines that go through the Central district, where certain vehicles cannot access, and companies and families have also been helped “in the energy transition”, with aid lines for “demonstrate that the energy transition” also has to be “socially fair.”
For Carabante, the main challenge facing Madrid, a city in which there are “thirteen million trips every day”, is that mobility “pivots” around public transport.
The challenges in the field of public transport are “electromobility” and the “integration of mobility modes”, he said: “We have to transcend that old conception of intermodality between public transport and private vehicles. There are new micromobility operators in the city, those operators that we have to integrate.”