Madrid and Barcelona advance against pollution. The two cities created Low Emission Zones (ZBEs) in 2018 and 2020, respectively. Both measures have suffered judicial setbacks, but in the absence of final judgments, they remain in force. Meanwhile, the two municipal governments have not only not slowed down in the fight against pollution, but are moving forward to veto the most polluting cars to gain space for neighborhood use at the expense of asphalt and traffic.
Political conviction can be greater (in Barcelona, governed by the commons of Ada Colau) or less (in Madrid, in the hands of the popular José Luis Martínez Almeida). But the legislation tightens. The European Commission threatens the two cities with millions in fines if they continue to exceed the legal levels (40 micrograms per cubic meter of nitrogen dioxide). And the Climate Change Law obliges municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants to create low-emission zones. All this when the World Health Organization (WHO) has lowered the levels it considers dangerous and Europe will review the current maximums.
Barcelona has seen this week how the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) annulled its Low Emissions Zone (ZBE). A veto for the most polluting vehicles in an area of 100 square kilometers in which vehicles without an environmental label from the DGT cannot enter from Monday to Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. The sentence is a setback for one of Colau’s star projects, approved with the support of 80% of the councilors in plenary session. In two years, it has reduced by 600,000 daily trips made by vehicles without a label and has reduced pollution by 11% (in 2020 and 2021 mobility was reduced due to the pandemic).
In response to the sentence, Colau has warned that he will not take “steps back”. “The right to pollute cannot be above the collective right to health”, he defends and maintains that the fight against pollution cannot be reversed. To do this, it will join the two tram networks through a vital artery for traffic such as Diagonal, it will turn four streets in the Eixample district into green axes without traffic, and it is pacifying school environments with pedestrianization or reduction of lanes. In addition, although there is no date, he wants to tighten the ZBE by vetoing cars with a yellow label (B). For a health issue (pollution kills a thousand people a year in the Catalan capital), he defends, and because of pressure from the European Commission to exceed legal limits.
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Madrid also exceeds those limits, and Madrid also saw how the Supreme Court left Madrid Central, one of the main legacies of Manuela Carmena, in the air in May of last year: 4.7 square kilometers of the center where cars without an environmental label are banned, while cars with label B or C can only access to get to a public parking lot. If in Barcelona associations and transport employers resorted, in Madrid the complaint was presented by the municipal group of the PP, for formal reasons.
And although the current mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, presented himself in the elections with the promise of withdrawing Madrid Central – he filled the bus shelters with posters with his face and the slogan “#WithAlmeida, Madrid Central is over” – the Madrid’s low emission zone is still in force. In the manner of Almeida: with a new unpronounceable name, ZBE-DEP Central District, and the entrance allowed to merchants, whatever their vehicle. The result is that 45,000 previously banned vehicles can now enter. The change was reflected in a new sustainable mobility ordinance approved last September. It is not the only novelty: a year ago another standard, air quality in the capital, put an end to coal-fired boilers.
And the fight against pollution does not end here. The capital now has a strategy that Almeida has called Madrid 360. Beyond the center, the Sustainable Mobility Ordinance plans to increase restrictions, like the rings of an onion, year after year until 2025. Madrid 360 has the same objective final than Plan A of the previous mayor, Manuela Carmena: limit the circulation of the most polluting vehicles in 2025 in an area of 604 square kilometers that covers almost the entire city, where vehicles that do not have an environmental label will not be able to access. However, Madrid 360 advances the measure to 2024 for non-residents, who account for half of the traffic. In 2025, the restriction will already affect the people of Madrid: they will not be able to circulate with vehicles without a label.
The first phase of this deployment affects from this year the most polluted area of the capital, the surroundings of the Plaza Elíptica, where there is a municipal measurement station. “It will allow traffic in the area to be reduced by 18.6%, the equivalent of a decrease of 37,000 vehicles per kilometer per day, 1,500 vehicles at rush hour,” says the Consistory.
Opposition reluctance
In Barcelona, the reticence of the opposition, of merchants who fear losing business and carriers who claim they cannot renew their vehicles, are fierce. In Madrid there have been, although smaller, as the restriction areas are also smaller. But also in the two cities there are those who find the restrictions timid and ask for more.
In Madrid, the previous Ombudsman considered that Almeida’s strategy is insufficient, especially the new Central Madrid. “It is an environmental setback,” Francisco Fernández Marugán wrote in 2021, urging the capital’s City Council to modify the new mobility ordinance. In Ecologists in action they are also critical: “The pandemic was the perfect time to continue advancing in the restrictions,” says Miguel Ángel Ceballos, his spokesman, by phone. “It was a good lever to continue doing things. In spite of everything, they have not been able to destroy what was there”, he adds.
In Barcelona, neighborhood organizations and environmentalists have summoned the City Council and the Generalitat (the two institutions will appeal the ruling that annuls the ZBE), not only to maintain the restriction, but to go further and establish an urban toll to discourage the entry of cars , a measure that will allow the law of sustainable mobility.
The CSIC researcher Xavier Querol, based in Barcelona, but who had advised the Madrid council, defend Airuse, a strategy that he led and that won The Best of the Best Green Cities Project award. The project proposes six recipes to improve air quality. One, create access lanes for buses only. Two, improve metropolitan public transport. Three, access tolls. Four, reduce the most polluting cars and favor the cleanest with low-emission zones. Five, use electric or hybrid vehicles for the distribution of goods. And six, an urban redesign to gain space for vehicles.
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