In a brainy document brimming with low-action verbs – such as ‘promote’, ‘plan’, ‘update’, ‘study’, ‘evaluate’, ‘analyze’, ‘improve’, ‘foresee’ or ‘define’ – a flash in the page four. Concrete: “We assume the commitment to work for the implementation of low emission zones (ZBE) in all the municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants before the end of the year 2025″. Then comes a long list of details, moratoriums and pardonsbut there it is political oath that this Friday will endorse the main public and social institutions on this side of the Ebro, under the title ‘Agreements for air quality in Catalonia‘. They will sign it at the Pedralbes Palace in Barcelona after a summit – the third to address the climate crisis in the region – short in time but extensive in terms of objectives.
The music will sound very familiar to citizens of Barcelona and its metropolitan environment, since they have been living with a ZBE for a little over two years now has managed to avoid many polluting displacements (609,000 daily, according to the city council) but which has not yet managed to unravel the main challenge of the contemporary mobility: getting a motorist to switch to more sustainable means. And no, the electric car does not count, because the debate has two sides, that of pollution, and that is largely saved by moving from the battery to fuel, and that of the congestion and abuse of public space by the private vehicles, and there it does not matter a watt than a diesel. In short, and the document signed this Friday does not give much detail about this, there is still a lack efficient public transport alternatives to seduce drivers. Much, much infrastructure is missing.
Some by the hair
If the commitment is met, by the end of 2025 a total of 67 municipalities will have a perimeter banned for the dirtiest cars. Around that time, it is likely that, in addition to what they do not have a DGT label, also start talking about those that go with the yellow label and are part of the Euro 4 group (diesel models between 2006 and 2013). Apart from the other three provincial capitals and the cities that you can imagine in Vallès, Baix Llobregat or Maresme, there are also towns that barely exceed 20,000 inhabitants, such as Banyoles, Manlleu, Palafrugell, Olesa de Montserrat or Amposta. In the case of Sant Quirze del Vallès, convincing 157 residents to register at their second residence (those who have one) or at the house of a close cousin would be enough to keep them out of the cut.
A total of 67 cities now begin the complicated task of establishing perimeters, moratoriums and transitions and negotiating with economic agents
According to current state regulationsthe municipalities with more than 50,000 registered (23, in the case of Catalonia) should have the ZBE operational before 2023, something that, at this point in 2022, seems very unlikely to be fulfilled if one takes into account that Barcelona presented his in 2017 but did not launch it until 2020. The same Spanish climate change law establishes that municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants must also implement traffic perimeters if they exceed the air quality limit values set by the European Union. That’s where the Catalan summit “take a step forward” universalizing the ZBE to this entire group of cities that could, depending on the fumes they breathe, avoid the measure.
“Flexible” deployment
The Catalan roadmap is the next. For municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, the scope of application of perimeter control will be defined in the first half of 2023. A year later, at the latest, the work should also be completed in those with more than 20,000. Everyone should see “a flexible vision so that they can adapt to a wide variety of situations”. Or what is the same, there will be moratoriums and transitionswhich have yet to be specified, for carriers, public transport or other peculiarities that consistories are detecting and conforming to the low emission zone.
The document, because this is supposed to be a task that each municipality must do independently, does not specify at all what alternative measures are on the table so that private mobility shifts towards collective transport. It speaks, in a generic way, of “parking managementincrease in connection places at strategic points of modal interchange (‘park&rides‘), improvement of the accessibility and supply of public transport or merchandise management“. All that is details and future improvements that, in an unscientific prediction, places 2030 as a possible date in which everything is more or less finished and underway.
In the case of Barcelona, at the beginning of the week the Councilor for Climate Emergency and Ecological Transition, Eloi Badiaadvanced that the next vehicles to be left out of the ZBE of the great metropolis will be those of Euro 4 yellow label, much more polluting, he said, than the Euro 5 and Euro 6. He clarified, however, that there is still no calendar. He also reported that the town hall had closed during 2021 almost 70,000 sanctioning files for vehicles without a label that entered the city. About that, the punitive capacity, the document signed this Friday does not specify anything. What it does make clear is that given that there will be many cities involved, the signage, schedules and uses must be consistent so as not to drive drivers crazy.
no obligations
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In the 15 pages of the agreement there are also bicycle references (connect urban plots with polygons in the environment, install more places to be able to leave them at bus or metro stations…) or collective transport. In this second point, the deployment of the “new BRCAT network” (known, in English, as bus rapid transit), a network of fast buses “that connect the different existing transport networks in the main urban areas of the country”; the installation of more bus lanes, and other elements already planned and, in theory, with a schedule, such as the central section of L9 wave union of the FGC del Llobregat lines with those of the Vallès than the extension of the L8 from Spain to Gràcia. There is also talk of distribution of goods and to rationalize the use of private vehicles, but without great specifics.
The economic and social agents (among the signatories Foment del Treball does not appear but yes PIMEC and the unions) have their separate chapter. They will promote renewal of fleets, they will bet on the telecommutingthey will try to unclog the rush hours of mobility with more flexible schedules and will promote digitization. But nothing that binds them or forces them to something concrete. The same with the port and the airport, which will also take steps in favor of cleaner energies but without giving up the shorter routes that have rail alternative, for example, or to veto the most polluting cruise ships. All this, if there is no going back, will be signed in the incomparable setting of the Pedralbes Palace. And later, if the agreement is fulfilled, it will be reviewed by the Air Quality Table of Catalonia, which should take shape in the short term. A kind of ‘Big Brother’ of the climate emergency, but without throwing anyone out.