Friday, March 29

Almeida extends the entry to the Center of polluting trucks with label B for one year, as requested by Vox

The mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, has announced this Friday that light trucks (up to 3,500 kilos) with label B will be able to access the ZBEDEP of Centro (former Madrid Central) throughout the year 2023 and not until 31 December of this year, as provided for in the Sustainable Mobility Ordinance.

The decision was made after meeting at the Palacio de Cibeles with the goods sector of the Madrid Road Transport Committee, a meeting in which the Environment and Mobility delegate, Borja Carabante, also participated. The modification will foreseeably be approved in the last plenary session of the year with the votes of the government team and Vox, which demanded this measure from the consistory as part of the conditions to sit down to negotiate its support for next year’s municipal budgets.

PP and Ciudadanos have signed an amendment to the mobility ordinance to modify this transitory provision with the aim that “carriers are not affected by the restrictions on access to the Center,” reports Europa Press. The municipal government has been guided, the councilor continued, “by the difficult economic situation” and by “the best air quality data.” “We cannot transfer more charges and encumbrances,” he pointed out.

The objective of the municipal government is to modify section 2 of the third transitory provision on environmental requirements for access to the Centro district with the specification that “until December 31, 2023” motor vehicles may access the Central District ZBEDEP with at least four wheels and MMA not exceeding 3,500 kilograms that have environmental classification B.

The Environment and Mobility area is aware that 3,824 vehicles weighing up to 3,500 kilograms with environmental classification B enter the Central District Special Protection Zone every day to deliver goods from establishments that require their services. The consistory assures that carriers have had difficulty renewing fleets in the automobile market due to delays in vehicle deliveries associated with the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine. They also ensure that inflation prevents them from “assuming the investments established by the calendar for access to the Centro district.”

Más Madrid assures that it is a “marketing with Vox”

The spokesperson for Más Madrid in the City Council, Rita Maestre, has no doubt that the moratorium that this measure is “a first concession by the mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, to Vox in exchange for the budget” and within a “marketing ”. Maestre believes that “the low emission zone as it is known up to now is in danger because the mayor is marketing with the budgets.”

“It is clear that the ultra-right is not going to stay here because they have been wanting to destroy Madrid Central at all costs for years,” Maestre declared in a statement, in which he stressed that there is “a serious danger that Almeiga will do even more concessions and that allows the entry of more polluting cars in the center of the city”.

Mar Espinar (PSOE), for his part, denounces that “once again it is shown that Almeida has been doing everything except managing because during this year he has lost the opportunity to help companies and individuals so that they could renew their fleet but he did not has done. Now the elections are approaching and he does not want to face the economic sector ”, he assures.

Vox celebrates that Almeida accepts the moratorium in Madrid Central

The leader of Vox in the Madrid City Council, Javier Ortega Smith, celebrated this Friday that the mayor, José Luis Martínez Almeida, is willing to grant a moratorium so that vehicles weighing up to 3,500 kilograms with a B label could access the city center , as the formation of the extreme right had demanded to sit down to negotiate the municipal budgets of 2023, the last of the legislature.

In a press release made public late this morning, Vox assures that it has been shown that the arguments put forward by the mayor for not a moratorium or modifying the Central Madrid Mobility Ordinance “were false and of mere political and electoral interest”. and for “climate fanaticism”. “We must celebrate the change in attitude of the municipal team”, which in the opinion of Vox Almeida has taken “not out of conviction, but forced by reality in the face of an Ordinance that established conditions that were impossible to comply with”.

However, they warn that despite this first advance “there is still a long way to go”, noting that “VOX’s demand is maintained to extend the moratorium to the rest of the vehicles that will be affected, starting next January for the increase in restrictions, until the courts make a final decision regarding ‘Madrid Central’ and its excessive policy of prohibitions, restrictions and sanctions”.





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