Cars to be ban at city centres in Spanish cities

MADRID: Spain wants to ban the vast majority of cars from city centres across the country and the citizens agree to the idea.

Institute of Public Opinion poll sector (IPSOS), recently released a poll stating that 63 per cent of the respondents favoured the restriction of car access in downtown areas. The agreeable attitude of citizens towards the ban increased to 78 per cent in the Northwestern region of Galicia.

This initiative not only includes the ban on cars but also plans to bring zero-emissions vehicles in the centre of any town of over 50,000 residents by 2025; it’s a rule that would be applied in 138 cities all around the country. The first phase of these zones already exists. The central Madrid recently became an ultra-low emissions zone, protected against pollution and congestion by the toughest restrictions on cars in place on a large scale in any major European city.

The idea of introducing such policies has been part of the public conversation for years. With Madrid’s first such car-restricted zone, a 1.8-square-mile (472 hectares) ultra-low emissions zone will transform the city’s transit network.

58,000 vehicles a day will be banned in the new zone. All the cars which run on fuel or gas and are designed before 2000 and all the vehicles that run on diesel designed before 2006 will be banned in the inner area of Madrid. This restriction might clean the city’s polluted air. It is also estimated that after the zones will be introduced completely, the level of nitrogen dioxide in the area will drop by 40 per cent.