València (EFE).- The Valencia City Council will open a series of participation tables with the different social agents to address the new municipal ordinance on the Low Emission Zone (ZBE), with the intention of reaching a balanced text where a number of exceptions to the rule.
The Councilor for Sustainable Mobility, Giuseppe Grezzi, pointed out in statements to EFE that the council wants to analyze the ordinance hand in hand with the Mobility Board, which brings together more than 80 citizen entities, to comply with the transition to the new model, complying the spirit of state law but “leaving no one behind.”
“We want to see from the entities what the ordinance is like, all the precepts that must be complied with, the system of sections and an application schedule, which is gradual and gradual to comply with this transition,” he adds.
Flexibility also in the calendar
As reported, the Government has launched a “type” ordinance that offers city councils flexibility in terms of the calendar, the transition and the possibility of incorporating exceptions, and the intention of the consistory is to reach a “balanced text” with the agreement of all the social agents.
“The ordinance will affect everyone and whoever can buy a new electric car will have an easy time driving within the city, but the rest, especially in this transition, must be able to make certain trips if necessary,” he reflects. .
“The vehicle must be used when there is no other choice, but there are many trips that cannot be done in any other way,” he adds, such as older people who need to be picked up to go to the hospital, “and we will reflect it in that ordinance” .
270 cameras and computer systems
The consistory prepared an initial map, in the specifications of the contract of the material that will be installed for traffic control – some 270 cameras, computer systems and the control management platform – with four zones, taking into account the ring road as a “way of escape”, but Grezzi points out that it is only “indicative” and the final one is yet to be defined.
The key, he assures, is to find a balance between the mandatory system and the system of exceptions, which is contemplated in all the ordinances that are being drafted. “There are obligatory steps and it will depend on whether we find the key between the two spirits we are looking for”, he adds.
Regarding the calendar, he points out that the first step to be taken is to convene the participation tables of the Mobility Table, so “we cannot specify dates for its application”, nor a yet definitive map of the areas.
“We want to make an ordinance in the best possible way, very staggered and communicated and there will be a transition period,” he indicates, to avoid situations such as the one produced in Barcelona, where the court declared its initial proposal for a low-emission zone null and void.
Grezzi also warns that the Valencia City Council cannot assume this transition “alone”, because it also absorbs “all the metropolitan traffic, entering and leaving the city, without having powers to do so”.
Pending the Metropolitan Mobility Plan
The Councilor for Mobility calls on the Generalitat to “make all the measures, promote the new concessions of the metropolitan lines, the yellow buses, which has been in process for seven years, improve the frequency of the metro and approve the Metropolitan Mobility Plan” , pending since 2017. “The Generalitat has to be more proactive and it is taking too long,” he laments.
It demands that the State also improve the Renfe de Cercanías service, and advocates dissuasive parking at source, that is, in the most distant municipalities where travelers leave for the capital.
Remember that the Metropolitan Mobility Plan presented by the Generalitat contemplated a parking map, also pending approval, on the outskirts of the city.
“In order for them to be a real deterrent to car use -Grezzi maintains- they have to be at the source, the rest are car parks that can favor but do not deter people who come from towns further away from the city”.
In shorter distances, he advocates an “intermodality” that prevents the municipalities closest to the capital from using the car “because, if not, the traffic jams at the entrances and exits to the city will not take it away from us.”
The will of the Valencia City Council, defends Grezzi, “is to follow the path we have followed in these years, in which we have reduced traffic by 10%”, with pedestrianization, the increase in public transport and bike lanes.
Remember that Valencia has been chosen one of the hundred European cities for the application of the European project that aims to decarbonise large cities by 2030. To achieve this objective, it calls for the involvement of all administrations.