On November 30, 2018, a low-emission zone with traffic restrictions came into force for the first time in Madrid. The then-called Madrid Central had its ups and downs (with legal decisions and appeals involved) until Madrid 360, the current active plan, arrived.
Madrid 360 was, in essence, Madrid Central, but it also served to bring together in a single project what Manuela Carmena’s Government had called Plan A. In addition, it created a new low emission area (Plaza Elíptica) and defined Madrid as a single low-emission area.
This Madrid 360, with Martínez-Almeida now as mayor, therefore maintained the plan to expel vehicles without a DGT environmental label. A project that, right now, prevents cars without a label that are not registered in the capital from circulating in the city.
The plan is for vehicles without a sticker registered in Madrid to be banned next year, in 2025. A project that will obviously leave thousands of cars unable to circulate on the streets of the entire municipality of Madrid (regardless of where these cars were registered).
The measure, which was already controversial, is now up in the air because the High Court of Justice of Madrid The council claims that not enough reports were projected on the impact of the measure and has given the city council a one-month deadline to present its appeals. For the moment, the plan is still active.
This situation has raised alarm and spread the news that there are 1.2 million cars in Madrid that will not be able to circulate from next year. A figure that has been repeated on many occasions but is not true. We are going to explain how this figure was reached, why and what the real figure is.
The 1.2 million vehicles that are 246,000 cars
The figure of contention was published by the European Automobile Association (AEA), specialists in the defence of drivers. The article was published on their website on 27 August and announced that they had requested a moratorium of at least two years from the Madrid City Council to avoid penalising 1.2 million vehicles in Madrid that did not have a DGT environmental badge.
The article explained that “one in three Madrid residents (1,189,607 compared to 3,460,491) already two out of three vehicles“They could be fined if they used their cars. The Madrid City Council itself responded to this article. Inma Sanz, the city’s deputy mayor, assured that the data that the City Council has are “infinitely inferior,” in the words of Europa Press.
In order to understand what happened, we have contacted both parties, which has allowed us to clarify the entire conflict.
The truth is that the data on vehicles registered in the Madrid register and their environmental category can be checked on the Open Data Portal of the Madrid City Council. The registers for 2022, 2023 and 2024 are published there. This is where the origin of the conflict lies.
Mario Arnaldo, president of AEA, assures us that, at the time of the report’s preparation, the latest published data was for the year 2022. “When we filtered the data, we found that around 400,000 vehicles were registered in Madrid They do not have an environmental label (figure also confirmed to WorldOfSoftware “These vehicles are classified as ‘non-environmental’ by the DGT) and the rest of the vehicles (around 800,000) are listed as ‘without environmental classification’. We add both figures because, whether or not they have a label, if the car does not have its environmental classification registered, they will be fined,” Arnaldo specifies.
In addition to the above data, AEA always refers to vehicles, so the figures above refer to passenger cars but also to motorcycles and trucks, among others.
When this figure was made public, Madrid City Council pointed out to the media that these figures were exaggerated and, shortly afterwards, published the data from the automobile registry for the years 2023 and 2024.
In these patterns, the vehicles “no environmental classification” have been corrected and now there are only a few that have that category. With the updated register, there are 384,162 vehicles registered without environmental labeling in Madrid, to which another 968 vehicles “without environmental classification” should be added. Of these vehicles, 246,518 are passenger cars without an environmental label and 816 are “without environmental classification”.
That is to say, right now, the confirmed number of cars in Madrid without an environmental label as of 2024 is 246,518, a far cry from the 1.2 million that have been reported in numerous media outlets.
“What we wanted was for the Madrid City Council to react because if the vehicle was registered as ‘without environmental classification’ was going to be sanctioned anywaywhether or not it was tagged, and at least that seems to have worked,” Arnaldo stresses when talking about the two updated registers uploaded by Madrid City Council once AEA published its article.
The DGT cannot clarify what Madrid City Council means by the label “without environmental classification”. Traffic assures us that it has no data that can confirm which situation these cars belong to.
In WorldOfSoftware We have asked Madrid City Council which vehicles are referred to as “without environmental classification” and how many vehicles circulate every day in Madrid without a label, but we have not received a response when this article was published.
Photo | Jorge Fernandez Salas
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