The Mayor of Madrid opens the second day of Global Mobility Call

The Mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, opened the second day of Global Mobility Call, organised by IFEMA MADRID together with Smobhub. In his speech, he announced that the municipal government has just published the tender for the drafting of the preliminary project for the execution of the second phase of the A-5 highway underground, which will reach almost to the city limits in correspondence with Operation Campamento (3,2km), a contract valued at one million euros. 

Almeida also pointed out that works have begun on the first section of the underground, and that a tender has just been published for the drafting of the preliminary project for the second phase.

The burying of the A-5 will allow in the first phase that the neighbours who currently have an urban motorway under their houses will have 80,000 square metres of green areas. And it will mean the implementation of lanes reserved exclusively for the circulation of public buses, which do not currently exist in this area, the mayor explained at the event.

Almeida stressed that Global Mobility Call offers the opportunity to reflect on one of the great challenges facing cities around the world, such as mobility, which is not only limited to travel, but also to the time in which these journeys take place and the design of public spaces.

In the Spanish capital there are 13.5 million journeys every day, said Almeida, who pointed out that the first step to manage these movements from a sustainable perspective has been to strengthen the Municipal Transport Company (EMT) and the public transport system of the city of Madrid.

This year, the EMT will beat its all-time record number of users, with more than 470 million journeys, to which must be added 10 million journeys to be made using the public bicycle rental system Bicimad. 

Among the policies promoted by the City Council, Almeida highlighted the improvement of public transport infrastructures, the renovation of the bus fleet and the inauguration of the first hydrogen plant in the Vallecas depot, the first publicly owned plant in Europe to supply a public company and make progress in the generation of clean energy. 

Madrid is the first city in Europe where no diesel buses run, since 1 January 2023, it aims for 100 % of EMT bus journeys to be sustainable by 2030, and aims for 30 % of its buses to be electric by 2027.  At the present time, there are 34 fully electrified bus lines in the city of Madrid and line 145, which connects Conde de Casal with Villa de Vallecas, will be the first complete line with hydrogen buses. 

Madrid City Council has set up subsidy lines, with 80 million euros allocated so far, to renew the city's vehicle fleets, taxis, distribution and logistics vehicles, as well as private vehicles. 

At the same time, infrastructures have been promoted to improve mobility and quality of life with the burying of the M-30 in the missing section of the Mahou-Calderón Operation in the district of Arganzuela during the last legislature or the execution of the remodelling of the Nudo Norte, which saves 14 million tonnes of CO2 produced as a result of traffic jams. 

Almeida's speech was followed by an interview with Richard Irvin, mayor of Aurora, the second largest city in the US state of Illinois, who said that it is necessary to review the approach to mobility "by focusing on the citizen and on revenue, mainly on making investments profitable".

"The challenge is to get people from the metropolitan area of the city to the urban centre of Aurora in a more efficient way," said the US mayor, who added that it has generated "a desire in people from the suburbs to come and visit the downtown districts that has revitalised their leisure and commercial activity".

Finally, Irvin stressed the importance of incentives and cost savings for users to encourage the use of public transport to the detriment of private vehicles: "We receive hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government to promote sustainable transport because no private investor would make a profit in the short term.

                                                                         *Content provided by Agencia EFE