Madrid lays the first stone to reduce CO ₂ emissions by 65% compared to 1990

Reduce CO2 emissions by 65% compared to 1990, reduce traffic by 10% and leave urban accidents in half. The City Council has eight years ahead to achieve the objectives set by the new Sustainable Mobility Plan (PMS) Madrid 360 approved this Thursday initially.

This plan brings together the Madrid 360 Environmental Sustainability Strategy and the two ordinances that support it (Sustainable Mobility ordinance, the Air Quality and Sustainability ordinance), the Roadmap for Climate Neutrality, the STRATEGIC Plan of the EMT and the Strategic Road Safety Plan 2021-2023.

Despite the announcements from the Palacio de Cibeles, the policies implemented by Madrid – like those of Barcelona – are “insufficient” under the magnifying glass of Brussels. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) holds a hearing on Thursday in which it studies a possible sanction to Spain for systematically failing to comply with the maximum levels of pollution set by EU regulations between 2010 and 2017 and the first pronouncements do not seem positive. The European Commission understands that the low emissions area of Centro, in operation since last October, “is not a sufficient measure as it is proposed,” according to the EFE agency.

The lawyer Eulalia Sanfrutos has explained that the new Madrid Central “covers a small area, excludes many vehicles and includes too many exceptions”. Likewise, the jurist has referred to ‘Madrid 360’, the global environmental policy designed by the Government of José Luis Martínez-Almeida to reduce pollution in the city, noting that “it is not an air quality plan”, but only a “strategy” that does not provide a precise timetable for its implementation.

An ambitious timetable for the first results

Oblivious to the controversy, from the Consistory they emphasize that the new scenario promotes the four ‘S’: sustainable, safe, healthy and efficient mobility or smart. And that two time horizons are set for its application, 2025 as short-medium term and 2030 as long term. Madrid sets itself the challenges of reducing by an average of 32.5% the time spent on public transport; reduce traffic by up to 10%, managing to alleviate congestion that affects the essential mobility of the city; halving accidents; reduce CO2 emissions by 65% by 2030 compared to 1990, as established in the COP25 agreement.

It also includes a commitment to address the European air quality directive and achieve a 50% decrease in deaths and serious victims on the road, in accordance with the objectives established by the European Union.

This includes improving transport infrastructures, promoting active mobility (foot and bike), managing car parks with sustainability criteria, facilitating modal integration through micromobility and intermodality, stimulating the change of the circulating fleet by less polluting vehicles and promoting technological change and the optimization of the urban distribution of goods.

€1,978 million investment

This new Plan involves an investment by the Madrid City Council of 1,978 million euros for the development of the proposed actions. The largest budget line of this plan (729 million) will be aimed at promoting active mobility, followed by the improvement of transport infrastructure.

Its “main vector” of development is public transport, in which Madrid is a reference worldwide. It incorporates all the infrastructures planned by other administrations, since they are essential to increase the participation of public transport in the mobility of the city and, especially, in the relations of Madrid with its metropolitan area.

In addition, all the actions foreseen in the Strategic Plan of the EMT that contemplates a modernization of the service and the bus fleet through an investment of more than 1,000 million euros, as well as the growth of the network of bus lanes, especially outside the M-30, are included.

It is committed to improving the pedestrian offer and public space in general. It proposes to continue with the creation of new multimodal axes, in which bike lanes are incorporated into the new designs of strategic mobility axes of the city. Clear examples are the remodeling of Joaquín Costa, the bike path in Paseo de la Castellana or the new design of Pedro Bosch Street, among others.

Source: The Vanguard