The time has come to know if the residents of Puente de Vallecas want parking meters on their streets. The Madrid City Council has just called a consultation to decide whether to extend the Regulated Parking Service (SER) to the majority of neighborhoods in this district, according to a resolution to which this newspaper has had access and which has not yet been disseminated.
The consultation will take place from November 11 to 25 and will be carried out through the municipal participation website, Decide Madrid. It will consist of two questions, the first will deal with the time it takes each driver to park in their neighborhood (between less than a quarter of an hour and more than 30 minutes) and the second question will be more direct: Are you in favor of SER being implemented in your neighborhood?
The proposal will cover five of the six neighborhoods that make up Puente de Vallecas: San Diego, Portazgo, Numancia, Palomeras Bajas and Palomeras Sureste. The Entrevías neighborhood is left out for the moment.
The mechanism will be similar to the one that the City Council used in Usera to approve parking meters in three of its neighborhoods. In that case, between 62% and 70% of the residents who participated in the consultation gave their approval and, as a result, the SER has already arrived in the Moscardó area and in December it will do so in Pradolongo and Almendrales.
The district councilor made this decision after almost a year ago a proposal from Más Madrid arrived at the Puente de Vallecas Plenary Session, in which it demanded the installation of parking meters in the neighborhoods of San Diego and Numancia. He came out ahead with the votes of the PP. The PSOE abstained and Vox spoke out against it.
Más Madrid brought the proposal forward when it was verified that in the neighborhoods of Numancia and San Diego many drivers used the areas as “parking facilities” before taking the Metro, leaving less space for residents to park. It is known as border effect which has helped the inhabitants of other neighborhoods bordering the SER to choose to give the green light to the parking meters.
Más Madrid’s proposal asked that residents not have to pay any amount to park in their neighborhood, but the PP pointed out that it was not possible due to municipal regulations. Currently, residents of other neighborhoods pay 24.60 euros per year to park in the green areas around them or 2.05 euros if they choose the monthly rate.
Two referendums and other extensions
The idea of a referendum among the residents of a neighborhood to consult on the installation of parking meters arose in Ciudad Lineal. The last one was held there in early 2023 after some of its neighbors complained about not having had information about a first consultation that took place in 2022, in which there was low participation. Most neighborhoods chose to paint their streets green and blue.
The councilor of Ciudad Lineal was the same one who is now in Puente de Vallecas: Ángel Niño, a councilor who came to the PP from Ciudadanos and who defended while belonging to the orange formation the need to consult among the neighbors about the placement of parking meters. Yours is the signature of the decree that now establishes the public consultation on the other side of the Vallecas scale, dated last October 18.
So far, the Madrid City Council has consulted on the expansion of the SER in the aforementioned Ciudad Lineal and in Usera, but imposed those of Puerta del Ángel (with some protests and vandalism at the beginning), San Isidro or Los Cármenes. In all of them, the Mobility area explained that it did so with the aim of reducing unnecessary car traffic, facilitating mobility and vehicle parking and promoting environmental sustainability in the district. In all the previous cases, prior approval of the request in the corresponding District Board was necessary, a procedure established by the current Mobility Ordinance, which does not include the obligation to organize any referendum.
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