The Badalona City Council will renew the mobility ordinance that must regulate the Low Emission Zones (ZBE) considering that the current regulations approved by the previous four-party government lack the essential elements, which could lead to complaints and appeals against the municipal administration. For this reason, the mayor, Xavier García Albiol, has commissioned a new ordinance from the Badalona Metropolitan Area and will suspend the current one in the next ordinary plenary session.
The ordinance in force, as explained yesterday by the mayor, accompanied by the Councilor for Mobility, Daniel Gracia, lacks “elementary documents” for its application, such as economic memory reports, social memory and environmental studies. These shortcomings would cause, according to the mayor, an avalanche of resources that "could be very expensive for the city council."
The new regulations that will regulate the ZBE in Badalona must include a study on the scope of application of road restrictions. “There was no technical study, it was a whim of the editor,” said Albiol, that 90% of the Badalona territory was affected by low emissions. The Badalona government will also require the AMB to quantify the possible exemptions to apply in the new regulations and gave as an example bonuses for a precarious family situation. Likewise, they will also require the deadline to begin the application of sanctions, which is initially estimated at January 1, 2027. Another unknown is whether the Generalitat, owner of the C-32 highway “will also apply the CBE” on the road that crosses Badalona.
Albiol harshly criticized the central government because he believes that with the application of the ZBE it has not been “careful and neat.” In this sense, he rejects that the local government can apply bonuses to citizens affected by road restrictions. “In Badalona there are 40,000 affected vehicles” of which 16,000 do not have an environmental label and another 25,000 euros that have the B badge attached. “Reducing all of them is unfeasible” pointed out Daniel Gracia, as well as aid to acquire a new vehicle “ that they should leave the State.” Other cases to study are elderly people, who have the ability to drive limited in time and “cannot be forced to change cars” if they stop driving in two or three years.
Another of the non-compliances that, according to the Badalona government, were carried out by its quadripartite predecessors is the obligation to promote an information campaign for all citizens about the ZBE” making known the possible effects and how to manage them. “A reasonable adaptation time is necessary for neighbors to become aware and adapt their personal situation,” claimed Albiol.
Currently, despite the initial controversy aroused between the Minister of Ecological Transition and Xavier García Albiol when she announced the imposition of the ZBE moratorium in Badalona, in which Teresa Ribera even threatened to go to court, the The City Council has already installed 70% of the cameras and information panels, to avoid losing the 2.5 million that the State transferred from European aid. However, the mayor summarizes the management of ZBEs in Spain as “a absurdity in which city councils have not been taken into account.” Albiol assures that “it has been a very poorly planned regulation” which is why he demands “a more comfortable framework for applying the ZBEs.”
