Madrid prepares for complete car ban

Madrid could be the first European city to ban all cars from its city centre following recent comments from its outspoken mayor, Manuela Carmena.

Speaking on the city's national radio station, Cadena Ser, Carmena announced that when she leaves office in May 2019 all private cars will have been banned from Madrid's city centre.

Local residents, she told the radio host, would have to rely on bikes, buses and taxis.

Banning cars is a direct response by the mayor to the city's on-going problem with air pollution that has already prompted Carmena to introduce an emergency 9-day car ban of all vehicles along Madrid's Gran Via - the main six-lane route into the heart of the city.

The road closure drew fierce criticism from the mayor's opponents but calls to for the mayor to resign or be sued have been rebuked by local businesses along the Gran Via who saw year-on-year turnover increase by more than 15 per cent.

Carmena has yet to reveal the plan on how she, and her local councillors, intend to ban cars but it's thought the radical proposals involve zoning off the entire centre of the city to create what's been described as a 'quasi-pedestrian' area where only residents have parking rights and the only vehicles operating during working hours will be low emission delivery vehicles.

Winning support among the city's 3.2 million residents, Carmena car ban could herald Madrid as the first major car-free city in Europe.

The Madrid mayor has already experimented with ridding the city of cars. In recent history that included a complete ban on parking within the city, introducing alternate driving bans for odd- and even-numbered vehicles and a slow 70km/h speed limits on the city’s major arterial highway.

Madrid, like many other land-locked European cities struggles with levels of poisonous nitrogen oxide in the atmosphere.

Paris has also addressed its poor air quality with car bans and now introduces an alternative car ban automatically after four consecutive days of high pollution.

Paris, Mexico City, Madrid and Athens recently made the headlines when all four cities announced that they would ban diesel-powered vehicles - one of the chief causes of nitrogen oxide emissions - from driving in the city centres by 2025.