Starting this Sunday, January 1, municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants must implement the so-called Low Emission Zones (ZBE), in accordance with the new Climate Change Law. With this legislation, The municipalities may prohibit the entry to the urban area of the cities to the cars that pollute the most to reduce pollution.
According to the new law, the Low Emission Zone is understood to be the area delimited by a public Administration within its territory and in which restrictions on access, circulation and parking of vehicles are applied to improve air quality and mitigate gas emissions. greenhouse effect, according to the classification of vehicles by their level of emissions.
As is already done in Madrid or Barcelona, the way that has been chosen in Spain to control which vehicles can and cannot access these protected areas is through the DGT environmental labels. Vehicles 0 (with a blue label identifies electric and plug-in hybrids) and Eco (gas and hybrid vehicles) are the only ones that will be able to completely get rid of the prohibitions and travel wherever they want.
This measure affects 149 Spanish towns, but, in addition, municipalities with between 20,000 and 50,000 inhabitants must restrict traffic at least temporarily during episodes of high pollution.
These are the Town Councils that must delimit the LEZs
In Madrid, vehicles with the ZERO emissions environmental label will be able to circulate and park in the SER zone without time restrictions, while those with the ECO environmental label will be able to enter and circulate freely in the area and, in addition, park in the SER zone for a maximum of two hours. . Those who have environmental badge B or C may access only to park in a public car park or private garage, unless they are guest vehicles authorized by the residents. In the case of motorcycles, with these tags they will be able to freely access from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Outside of this time frame, they will have to go to a car park for public use.
For their part, workers with a night shift will not be able to enter the center of Madrid if they have a car without a label, the same as the group of lawyers on the ex officio shift.
Outside of these restrictions are merchandise vehicles with B labels, since the Plenary Session of the Madrid City Council approved the application a moratorium for these that they can access can access the downtown district during 2023.
The implementation of the Low Emission Zones will affect some 25 million users throughout Spain and will complicate the lives of drivers since each municipality can approve different regulations. The absence of a common framework that makes it possible to clearly understand the regulations has led to a disparity of criteria that, far from unifying, confuse users and companies even more.
Faced with this situation, Aneval, the association that represents more than half of the “rent a car” market, has urged the city councils to make the rules for access to the LEZs clear and to publish them in advance so that users can they can know the prohibitions and circulatory restrictions with enough time to adapt.
