A city bus on the Paseo del Parque, in a picture from last April. John Keeble (Getty Images)
The city council of Malaga, Spain’s sixth largest city with 579,076 inhabitants and governed by the PP, has asked the government for a one-year extension for the establishment of the low emission zone (ZBE) in the city. This is a measure that 151 municipalities across the country are obliged to come into force from January 1, 2023 and which the capital Málaga had already postponed to January 1, 2024. However, she has now requested a postponement for another year. This, they assure from the consistory, is due to the delay in the arrival of electronic materials due to “the great demand” for components for the implementation of these restricted areas, “which also entails the delay in the corresponding tests and trials.” ” A software platform has been developed that the ZBE will manage,” municipal sources said. Neither the Ministry for the Ecological Transition nor the Ministry of Transport – which administers the aid – have approved this change for now.
Only 14 of the 151 municipalities obliged to promote these zones have already fully implemented them, while another 15 have not even started their procedures, according to data presented on Thursday by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán.
Environmental zones are one of the measures in the Climate Protection Act that aim to improve air quality in larger cities. They achieve this by limiting the access of the most polluting vehicles – according to the classification established by the General Directorate of Transport – to the area determined by each of the 151 municipalities affected by the standard: municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants more than 20,000 exceeding the specified air pollution limits and the island areas.
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To comply with the standard, Málaga has designated an area of 427 hectares, which currently hosts around 200,000 vehicles per day. The area that will be closed is the one that surrounds the center of the capital, beyond the Malagueta district to the east, the El Ejido area to the north and Avenida Andalucía – up to the Bridge of the Americas – and El Bulto to the west. Its objectives are to improve air quality, reduce noise and promote sustainable mobility, achieved by eliminating a large part of private traffic in this area, monitored by a hundred cameras.
Málaga has already approved its sustainable urban mobility plan in 2022, which includes the creation of a low emission zone. On October 7 of the same year, it awarded to the joint venture of Tecnologías Viales Aplicadas Teva SL and Tevaseñal, SA, for just over three million euros, the start of work, which included the installation of intelligent road recognition systems. Registration, in addition to construction work. According to municipal sources, the contract is 80% executed, but an unexpected problem arose: the “delay” in “receiving the main components that integrate the lighting of the cameras for reading license plates” due to “the great demand from everyone”. Cities forced to implement the ZBE.”
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The city council claims that the lack of materials prevents not only the commissioning of the plant, but also the implementation of the relevant tests and trials to carry out the preliminary checks. The city also argues that there have also been delays in the final data from other organizations designing the restricted area management platform, such as the General Directorate of Transport (DGT).
According to the city council, all of this meant that an extension of one year had to be applied for for the commissioning of the low-emission zone. The request was made last Monday by the councilor for mobility, Trinidad Hernández, who has been in office since this summer and was provincial director of transport in Malaga for 22 years. The municipality assumes that there will be no problems in obtaining the extension, since the ZBE’s regulatory framework provides for the possibility of changing the planned deadline “if unforeseeable, sufficiently justified circumstances arise that make compliance with the deadline impossible , although the beneficiaries have taken the minimum technical and planning measures that the results require.” They also assured that the winning company continues to look for new suppliers of the affected components in order to work “as quickly as possible”. The aim is to begin the restrictions before the deadline for the requested extension, December 31, 2024, although there is no specific date.
Letter to the local councilors
Málaga has received almost five million euros in next-generation aid from Europe to set up its low emission zone, an amount that risks being forced to return. The Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda has written to the city, as well as the other municipalities that have to support these areas, informing them that if they do not implement or modify them without authorization, the reimbursement of these funds will be requested. another subsidized project like bike paths.
According to sources at the Ministry of Transport, the aid regulations state that “the conditions established in the decision, including changes to the costs initially estimated, may be changed at the request of the beneficiary or ex officio, as long as the changes change.” They do not change the nature nor the objectives of the subsidy and do not lead to a significant change in the scope of the supported measures. According to government sources, Málaga has currently received neither a negative nor an affirmative response.
In Málaga, according to the government, the municipalities of Estepona, Marbella, Fuengirola, Benalmádena, Torremolinos, Rincón de la Victoria and Vélez-Málaga also have to install ZBE. Only Mijas is waiting to start the process. The Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán, announced this Thursday that 14 of the 151 obliged municipalities have already fully implemented the environmental zones and that fifteen of them have not yet started the procedures for their implementation compared to 122 that have done so.
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