Empresa Municipal de Transportes de Madrid (EMT Madrid), the city’s public transport agency, plans to modernise its facilities and to reduce its CO2 emissions thanks to innovative projects that will benefit from funding through the various calls to tender established with the aid of NextGenerationEU funds. The amount of investment for the completion of these projects will total €261,552,295.31 and EU financing will reach a total of €144,285,238.27. NextGenerationEU funds are planned to contribute to the recovery process after the immediate economic and social damage inflicted by the Covid pandemic. These funds are the fruit of an agreement between the European Commission, the European Parliament and EU leaders intended to create a recovery plan that will foster a fast and fair exit from the crisis and will establish the basis for a modern, sustainable Europe. In the case of Spain, the plan has been given the name “Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia” (PRTR).
These funds are managed jointly by the Member States and the European Commission and, within each Member State, their management is shared between various public agencies at a national, regional and local level.
As a leading public company in the field of urban surface transport and a benchmark agency in terms of sustainable mobility methods, EMT Madrid has presented numerous proposals for which it will receive investment proceeding from the various calls to tender that are being managed in their turn by different Ministries, within the framework of the Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia fostered by the Spanish central government.
In the 2021 call for tender issued by the programme of aid to municipal councils for the introduction of low emission zones and for digital and sustainable transformation in urban transport, which is managed by the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda, the Madrid municipal transport agency will receive funding of a maximum value of €99,760,705.36. These investments are intended to set under way various initiatives to favour the digital and sustainable transformation of the urban surface transport system in the city of Madrid.
With regard to the aid initiative “Boosting commercial activity in tourist areas 2021” promoted by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, EMT Madrid will also receive NextGenerationEU funding through this channel. The objective in this case is to promote initiatives such as the full renovation of the Recoletos parking area and the installation of improved access to EMT bus-stops. These initiatives will benefit from EU funding up to a maximum limit of €3,448,856.11.
The call to tender under the theme “Sustainability Projects in Tourist Destinations” will enable EMT to install an electrical charging station as soon as a maximum investment of €2 million is received from NextGenerationEU funds, administered in this case by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism under the Plan for Recovery, Transformation and Resilience. The electrical charging station, located in the Canalejas 360 sustainable mobility hub, provides the opportunity to benefit from clean mobility alternatives in a commercial area with a high level of attractiveness for tourists.
For its part, the “Integrated Plan for Supporting Commerce in 2021” is also financed through NextGenerationEU funding and is administered by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism. Through this call to tender, EMT Madrid will be able to improve aspects of its operations linked to sustainable mobility infrastructure in the urban environment in which it carries out its commercial activity. All of the above is designed to promote the reactivation of commercial activity in Madrid accompanied by digital transformation, as a means of ensuring sustainable growth. The investment received will have a maximum limit of €562,200. Madrid’s municipal transport agency, the Empresa Municipal de Transportes de Madrid (EMT Madrid) will also receive a maximum funding of €38,513,476.8 from the 2022 call for subsidies to municipalities for the implementation of low-emission zones and the digital and sustainable transformation of urban transport, managed by the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda. This funding will be used to finance projects such as purchasing electric and hydrogen-powered buses and their chargers, constructing a pantograph charging bridge and extending the Bicimad scheme.
The Madrid 360 Environmental Sustainability Strategy is the municipal plan that coordinates and structures all the initiatives for technological modernisation and improvements to environmental quality that EMT is planning to develop. Its objectives include improving air quality, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and contributing to the climate-based objectives of the EU and to economic recovery. In particular, this plan influences citizens’ mobility habits, encouraging sustainable and environmentally clean travel that will favour social development.