The decision of former mayor Manuela Carmena to minimize the imposition of fines for irregularly accessing Central Madrid before the 26-M municipal elections had a side effect: repeat offenders saved dozens of fines between March and June , when the new government team of the Madrid City Council chose to enforce the municipal ordinance.

This follows from the data that EL MUNDO has accessed on the first months of application of the traffic restriction zone of Central Madrid, a large part of which can be consulted on the Madrid City Council website itself. As the area of ​​Environment and Mobility, whose head was Inés Sabanés, he ordered that only vehicles with no environmental distinction - diesel prior to 2006 and gasoline before 2000 - be sanctioned once a month, while a total amnesty was applied to cars with environmental labels B and C, multi-recidivists drivers saved a lot of fines .

For example, there is a vehicle that was fined on May 6 for improperly crossing the perimeter of Central Madrid. It is a car without an environmental badge, to which only one penalty could be imposed per month, following the order given by the Carmena team. Well, in June, when it was decided to apply the municipal ordinance and fine as many times as necessary to the offenders, that vehicle received up to 19 penalties . That is, it was expedited practically every day of the month.

Another example, also of a vehicle without an environmental badge. He was fined on March 18, just two days after sanctions were officially started, and on May 6. No more fines. But in June, the driver of that car emulated the previous one: 17 fines throughout the month.

A third example, also corresponding to a vehicle of the most polluting that circulates in Madrid: fine 18 of mallet, again sanction on May 8 ... and none more until June, when it accumulated 16 sanctioning files.

Recall that the fine for driving through Madrid Central without having the right to do so is 90 euros, an amount that is reduced by half for paying it immediately.

And a fourth example to finish: a vehicle without an environmental badge that was fined on March 17, May 6 and 15 times throughout the month of June.

It is, in all cases, of repeat offenders - whether due to ignorance of the new municipal ordinance that limited traffic in Central Madrid or by simple incivism - that a large amount of money was saved by the covert moratorium that the previous one applied City Government team. Interestingly, when analyzing the data of the fines imposed in the first months of operation of Central Madrid it is very difficult to find sanctions corresponding to the month of April, probably due to the fact that the City Council had to cancel more than 6,000 for the errors detected in the system that recorded violations.

As recognized by the Inés Sabanés Environment and Mobility area at the beginning of June, 81% of the fines imposed between the end of March and mid-April had to be canceled because the time of the infraction was poorly recorded. In addition, the system also did not correctly incorporate the time change that occurred on March 30. In total, 6,602 fines were left uncollected.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more