On 5 June, the Department of Urban Planning, Environment and Mobility concluded the work of updating the Compendium of the Urban Development Regulations of the General Urban Development Plan of Madrid of 1997. For mobility consultants and planners, this represents a substantial change in the studies that we draw up within the Municipality of Madrid, especially for projects that require this type of analysis for their processing.
First, it is worth recalling the regulatory framework governing traffic and mobility studies in the Municipality of Madrid. This is mainly given by the Instruction on Public Roads, specifically in its section 3.2.1 Transport Studies. The inclusion of a Transport Study in partial plans, special plans and building projects has as its main objectives, on the one hand, to guarantee the technical basis for decisions relating to transport and road design in development planning and, on the other, to prevent the increase in traffic congestion in the City of Madrid on the main network from exceeding certain levels.
It should be noted that, according to the Public Road Instruction, a Transport Study must be included in all plans and projects that exceed any of the following thresholds for new construction:
- 150 dwellings or 15,000 m2, in residential building.
- 000 m2 for office buildings
- 000 m2 of commercial, leisure or commercial buildings
- 500 parking spaces
- 000 m2 in any type of building
- All special plans which, even without the construction thresholds set out in the previous point, affect more than 500 dwellings or 50,000 m2 of building or elements of the main road network of the municipality of Madrid.
In recent years, the City Council has also requested reports for all logistics developments to be implemented in the City of Madrid, in order to assess their possible impact on traffic congestion. In order to evaluate this impact, the estimation of the generation of peak hour trips, and the modal split and vehicular traffic generated, are fundamental elements. This is where parking provision plays a key role.
Until the update of the Compendium of the Urban Development Regulations of the General Urban Development Plan of Madrid (2017 edition), the General Urban Development Plan (PGOU) of the Madrid City Council included in its articles 6.8.14 of the “Third Section. Parking Service Provision”, 7.5.6 of “Section One. Conditions for the provision of parking spaces” and 7.5.35 of “Section Six. Régimen General de Compatibilidad y Localización del Uso de Garaje-Aparcamiento”, the provision of parking spaces according to the uses of the standard buildings.
The first two articles mentioned are related to the regulation and conditions of the provision, while the third article defines the parameters that determine the provision of parking spaces in accordance with the General Plan. The first of these articles, 6.8.14: “Provision of Parking Services”, defines in an ambiguous manner that “Buildings shall have the necessary space for the parking of their users’ vehicles. This provision shall include that corresponding to non-built spaces used for the development of an activity” and that “the provision of parking services shall be determined according to the use to which the buildings are destined, their surface area, their location and, where appropriate, the foreseeable number of users, in accordance with the criteria established in these Regulations. This provision shall include that corresponding to non-built spaces for the development of the activity”. Article 7.5.35 regulates the minimum required number of parking spaces according to the projected surface area of each of the uses. Specifically for industrial and office use, it states the following:
- Industrial use: “At least one parking space shall be provided for every one hundred (100) square metres of built-up area. In the area outside the Old Town, automotive workshops shall have a parking provision, inside the establishment or free space of buildable plots, of at least one parking space for every twenty-five (25) square metres of surface area of the premises, calculated according to the criteria of art. 7.4.4.
- Use of tertiary services for offices: “In the area inside the M-30, there shall be a minimum of one (1) parking space for every one hundred (100) square metres of built surface area. In the rest of the municipality, there will be a minimum of 1.5 parking spaces for every one hundred (100) square metres of built-up area”.
With the approval of the Urban Development Regulations, several changes have been introduced in the parking provision policy for new logistics, industrial and office developments. To summarise, the main changes are as follows:
- It proposes to adapt the values of parking, loading and unloading spaces, incorporating a mandatory provision for bicycles and active mobility vehicles.
- On the other hand, there is a geographical differentiation between three zones (precinct and historic centre, inside the M-30 and outside the M-30).
- In certain cases, maximum limits are established or total or partial exemptions are granted, subject to a prior municipal report (which will be included in the corresponding licence or declaration of responsibility).
- It opens up the possibility of modifying the allocation ratios collected by means of a Special Plan in order to adapt them to the city’s environmental conditions.
It eliminates the need to process a Special Plan for car parks of more than 12,000 m2, but instead a mobility study can be presented for developments with car parks of more than 400 spaces.
TABLE OF VEHICLE PARKING SPACES STANDARDS (URBAN PLANNING STANDARDS)[1]
In conclusion, we could say that the update of the Compendium of the Urban Development Rules of the General Urban Development Plan of Madrid is a step in the right direction towards a more detailed planning of the city, clarifying the parking provision of developments, defining the characteristics of these and limiting the interpretations regarding the parking provision of new developments. All of this will lead to a better urban management of the city in which transport consultants must help to better design the future logistics, industrial and office developments that Madrid will host.
[1] Compendium 2023 of the Urban Development Standards of the General Urban Development Plan of Madrid of 1997 (Updated on 05.06.2023).
Jorge Rodríguez
Technical Director at Vectio
