
Emissions fall in Madrid city center thanks to new traffic restrictions - ingve
https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/03/14/inenglish/1552556189_425975.html
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tomelders
I don't own a car because I'm fortunate enough to live in London with an
awesome public transport system and a half decent cycle network.

But the air quality here sucks and pollution from cars is through the fucking
roof. We just introduced an Ultra Low Emission area scheme that's a half
hearted attempt to do what they've done in Madrid, but for me that doesn't go
far enough.

I think we should just ban any vehicles that aren't electric from being inside
the M25 and give people two years to prepare.

I get that this will be difficult for a lot of people and cause a lot of
disruption, but it's killing us. It's killing us now. And if the Brexit
brigade can wave away the looming catastrophe of their no-deal-Brexit dreams
by conjuring up fantasies about the Blitz spirit, and how we can always make
do and mend because we're British; then I don't see why we can't use that same
logic to inflict difficult circumstances on people to save the fucking planet
and protect our fellow citizens from the harm of air pollution that's being
brought into our city by people who don't fucking live here.

~~~
kingosticks
And just look at the black cabs. Currently excempt from the ULEZ with their
old diesel engines running all day because..? Oh, money.

~~~
tim333
Money and politics. It's kind of ironic that the government controlled black
cabs "are responsible for about 60 per cent of greater London’s NOx emissions
from passenger cars" while the mostly unregulated Ubers are mostly relatively
clean Priuses. I gather they are gradually trying to switch the black cabs to
electric. [https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/black-cabs-
taxis-a...](https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/black-cabs-taxis-air-
pollution-london-research-true-icct-a8688141.html)

~~~
vondur
I take it that diesels aren’t required to have DEF to reduce the NOx
emissions?

~~~
tim333
I don't think the black cabs have that.

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Al-Khwarizmi
And the current mayor will probably lose office next month to parties that
have promised to remove said restrictions, because in Spain hardly anyone
cares about breathing poison. Sadly, being able to take and park cars
everywhere seems to be a much higher priority for much of the population (I
say this as a Spaniard).

My hope is that the EU somehow intervenes and stops them from taking steps
back in this respect. As mentioned in the last paragraph of the article,
reducing emissions is an EU mandate. The EU has often been the force behind
many, if not most of, the anti-pollution policies adopted in Spain.

~~~
kzcqt
This baffles me. The government is there to serve the people. People are
unhappy about what the current mayor is doing, that's why she's getting kicked
out. Advocating for the EU to step in and force people to stay unhappy will
only increase the anti-EU sentiment, but I guess the cat is out of the bag on
that one.

~~~
dingallero
Pretty much any city in EU has now some forms of traffic restriction policies.
The same is true for where I live as well.

The issue is not really the restriction, but the lack of alternatives. Very
few cities have a decent metro zone: these cities are the only ones where I
see no objections to stricter traffic policies.

Most cities are only served by public _road_ transport services. This doesn't
have the same level of service, by a long shot. There's a huge, _huge_
difference between having to plan your move in 1hr intervals and just hop on a
platform having to wait no longer than 10 minutes. Not to mention the cost,
inevitable delays due to traffic, shorter service hours and so on.

I would _ban_ all cars tomorrow and sell mine too if I could get anywhere in a
metro. Reality is, this is only feasible for very few selected places.

The governments here should make public transport _massively_ better first.
The reality is that they just enforce restrictions and provide no
alternatives. What do you do then?

~~~
kzcqt
Yeah, thanks for this comment. That's what makes this matter worse: they
restrict private transport, but public transport just gets worse and more
expensive every year.

~~~
jaden
At least for the Madrid metro, they have what I consider to be one of the most
accessible and convenient public transportation systems I've used. And
compared to Indianapolis, where I currently live, Madrid's public transport
makes what we have here an embarrassment.

~~~
inferiorhuman
Madrid public transit is pretty comprehensive, but not particularly cheap or
accessible. The rail is a bit archaic to use (single use tickets require
source and destination stations despite being mostly one fare zone), station
layout is fairly confusing at the bigger stations IMO. Perhaps most
importantly, the stations are often pretty deep requiring a lot of waking --
not a problem if you're able bodied though.

I didn't use the bus system at all so I can't comment there. Barcelona in
comparison has fairly easy to navigate stations and a much friendlier fare
system.

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acd
The air in cities are getting dirty mostly due to diesel car emissions. In
order to save the planet from global warming a lot of diesel cars has been
sold in Europe due to lower co2 emissions. They were sold as clean diesel cars
but were not really clean emitting a lot nox/pm2.5 small particle emissions.
The small particles are a danger to public health. It is time we go fully
electric/hybrid car in the cities or remove cars from the city centers all
together. I do not think a car drivers in cities has the right to pollute the
air quality that pedestrians breathe.

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kikoreis
It may be two steps forward one step back but we're step by step cracking the
urban mobility nut that bothered me the most in my teens. Rock on human
powered city centres, I look forward to having my children enjoy them.

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AuthorizedCust
There are more choices than the extremes. But if those are the only choices
offered, the citizenry may simply prefer more pollution over reductions in
productivity or convenience.

That's not an irrational choice, unless your prerogative is that there's no
value in personal transportation, which is extreme. I see that a lot, and it's
a first cousin of the "if it just saved one life" argument, which erroneously
assumes there's no value in any other perspectives.

Nothing comes without cost. Even public transit has consequences, and at least
in the USA, it's far less "clean" than commonly believed.

~~~
wincent
The plan as implemented in Madrid isn't very extreme though. There is a long
list of exceptions for getting into the restricted zone, including going into
a public parking lot.

[https://www.madrid.es/portales/munimadrid/es/Inicio/Movilida...](https://www.madrid.es/portales/munimadrid/es/Inicio/Movilidad-
y-transportes/Madrid-Central-Zona-de-Bajas-Emisiones/Criterios-de-
acceso/Criterios-de-Acceso-y-
Autorizaciones/?vgnextfmt=default&vgnextoid=b22fda4581f64610VgnVCM2000001f4a900aRCRD&vgnextchannel=cdfd96d2742f6610VgnVCM1000001d4a900aRCRD)

~~~
marcosdumay
So, what I get from that is that they made sure it won't be a problem for
anybody rich.

I would be angry if my citie's government imposed a restriction with such a
list of exceptions.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
I still have to see a workable plan for emissions reduction that the rich
cannot circumvent (except banning cars altogether, which would create
outrage).

Tax entering the city center? Not a problem for the rich, who can pay easily.
Tax cars depending on emissions? The same. Allow electric cars only? The rich
have money to buy a Tesla. Allow only even or odd license plates depending on
the day? The rich can buy two cars, one with odd and another with even license
plate. Allow entering only if you use a paid public parking lot? The rich can
pay for that. Disallow non-residents? The rich can buy a flat in the center.

Let's not fool ourselves, saving the planet and people's lungs mean that some
things that are now widely reachable have to become scarce. And however we
frame it, elites will always have better access to scarce resources. Still,
I'd rather save the planet and my lungs than do nothing. And we can always tax
the rich more to compensate.

~~~
marcosdumay
A tax for entering the city center would be much more equitable.

My expectation is that this one plan creates exactly such a tax in practice,
but it's privately collected by the few people rich enough to own land there.

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thekingofh
Good. I visited Spain a couple decades ago and by far the craziest amount of
smog I witnessed was in Madrid. I would be sneezing black stuff by the end of
my couple days there. Really hope they get it cleaned up because it's such a
neat city.

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madrileno
Something people have to know is that these rules affect only the center of
Madrid and traffic has been severely restricted in the Gran Via.
Traditionally, this has been an important route to get from one side of the
city to the other. So what this means is this traffic has moved somewhere else
and that's why you see such a small drop in CO2 emissions in the city as a
whole. Ironically, few families live in the center, so this might end up
worsening the problem in residential/family areas.

Now closing the Gran Via and surrounding roads is problematic for various
reasons. For example, the most important museums and cultural activities are
in this area.

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pkaye
Just force all the manufacturers to fix their dieselgate cars. Is anything
actually being done about it or are they too worried that this will bankrupt
the car companies?

~~~
Scoundreller
It’s a lot harder to do when it will bankrupt your _local_ car companies.

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hevi_jos
Carmena is communist, an "elpais" is a leftist newspaper. They are partial and
you can not trust them on this. Specially now that we are under elections.

An 8% difference with last year is nothing in Madrid. Madrid has big
differences in pollution depending on what it rains, and specially on the
wind. Pollution is bad there when there are anticyclonic weather and thermal
inversion.

Madrid has very clear skies, it is like Denver,Colorado. The near mountains
filter the low clouds. So at night most heat is radiated, making inversion
frequent.

Carmena has created chaos in Madrid, an enormous congestion, just ask any taxi
driver. I talked with people in the Politecnic University in Madrid in Winter
and some levels of pollution were higher this year than last one(last year
rained a lot so it was very clean).

I'd bet those numbers have been cooked to make Carmena look good. Most of the
traffic goes now around the perimeter created and those places are way worse
than last year.

In Spain most of the Media is controlled by the left and now also the leftist
Government, that directly controls public Media(In Spain public Media depends
on taxes, not like the BBC or Media in Europe).

Carmena is not a great technical person. She acts on feeling and ideology.
Facts care very little to her.

~~~
switch007
> She acts on feeling and ideology. Facts care very little to her.

A prior lawyer, judge and member of the General Council of the Judiciary –
with a total judicial career of 29 years – cares not for facts?

~~~
madrileno
You know Spain too little my friend!

~~~
switch007
No seas condescendiente. Me rindo que ella no es perfecta pero por favor si
queréis que creamos que sea una idiota total a quien no le importan datos y
tales, haznos el favor de explicar y dar mas ejemplos. Y no me parece justo
darla por perdida por lo del tráfico, si eso es lo que pasó.

