The Community of Madrid has approved to begin the expansion works on metro line 11. It did so in the last Government Council, held last Wednesday, November 15, 2023. The minutes of the session indicate that it is done “for reasons of urgency and general interest” and that it will involve “affects in certain plots.” The Ministry of the Environment has given its approval to the felling and transplanting of trees that the work will entail after nine months of struggle by neighborhood groups to protect them. According to the latest proposal for the Community of Madrid project, 880 trees located in the Comillas park, in Carabanchel, will fall; Madrid Río and the surroundings of Palos de la Frontera, in Arganzuela; at the Atocha station and in Conde de Casal, in the Retiro district.
Although the works are already underway, the project does not yet have a license to cut down the trees from the Madrid City Council, according to a spokeswoman for the City Council’s Mobility and Environment area. The Department of Transport has stated that as soon as they have permission from the City Council they will begin logging. The definitive modified project, for which a period of six months is expected, will add a hydrogeological study to know the conditions of the land on which the works will be carried out. The neighbors behind the No to logging had already pointed out that the hydrological study that included the previous project was not complete and did not consider some issues, for example, that in the Atocha area there is a lot of groundwater, but the project did not indicate how it was going. building a station will affect the water table, which is the capacity of the soil to absorb water from rain. Neighbors have argued that the station can act as a dam and cause the water table to rise. This means having to pump the water from time to time to remove it and this can affect the floors and buildings.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Transport has justified the urgency of starting the work because “the complexity of the works requires the simultaneous start, and as soon as possible, in various work places in order to comply with the planned schedule and deadlines. execution”. After a process of making allegations against the project and responding to the 355 proposals from residents and government entities, the Community of Madrid has not given in and the location of the Madrid Río station remains inside the Arganzuela park, an area with a type of protection that does not allow railway infrastructure to be built inside. The neighbors proposed in a meeting with the Department of Transportation to place the station on the Paseo de Yeserías road between numbers 33 and 41. This place, further west than the original location and outside the park, does not coincide with a pipeline of the Canal de Isabel II who bothers to build the station in the original location and in the latest proposal of the Community of Madrid. The Ministry of Transport is studying, on the recommendation of the Ministry of the Environment, not to place the electrical substation of the Palos de la Frontera station under the Palestine gardens. This would save 45 trees.
The project to expand metro line 11, which will extend its route from Plaza Elíptica to Conde de Casal, is under the scrutiny of the European Union. The European Parliament agreed to study the initiative after the residents behind the No to Logging movement went to the European Parliament’s petitions committee in September to ask that they monitor the project. The European Investment Bank, also known as the Climate Bank due to the environmental nature of the projects it finances, will contribute three quarters of the 500 million euros that the work will cost. The neighbors denounce that the Community of Madrid presented the original project to the Climate Bank, but then has not communicated the changes it has made. This original project involved much less logging; The Comillas park was not going to be razed and in Madrid Río only 20 trees were lost compared to the 250 planned in the current proposal.
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