The Madrid City Council will manage the entire M-30. The budgets for 2025 that will be approved this morning in plenary session and include an item of 112.2 million euros to buy 20% of the mixed company Madrid Calle 30 SA that is still in private hands. According to the Works and Equipment Area, the change in the management model of the ring road to a completely public one is scheduled for early 2026 and will save Madrid residents close to 63 million euros per year, so the purchase would be amortized. in one year and seven months.
In 2004, the Ministry of Development transferred ownership of the M-30 to the Madrid City Council, which created a totally public municipal company called Madrid Calle 30 SA to manage it. One year later, with Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón At the head of the City Council, private capital entered and it became a mixed company. Currently, both the management services and the maintenance and operation of the road operate through a contract between Madrid Calle 30 and the Empresa de Mantenimiento y Explotación SA (Emesa), which owns 20% of the mixed company. . Both agreements are in force until 2040, but among their clauses is that the City Council can buy the shares from its private partner before the end of 2025. And so it will be.
Emesa is made up of Grupo ACS, Florentino Pérez’s construction company, and Ferrovial. It has almost 300 workers who will be substituted after the acquisition by the City Council and will maintain all their working conditions.
According to a press release issued by the Works and Equipment Area of the Madrid City Council, initially mixed management was more efficient, but “the passage of time, regulatory changes and economic evolution” have meant that in order to maintain “the level of excellence in the service” of the road, “a rethinking” of the form of management to a private one is necessary, justifies the Consistory.
The first step to change the management model was taken by the PSOE two years ago in a Municipal Plenary Session. All political groups voted in favor. The request came as a result of a report published in 2017 by the Chamber of Accounts in which Gallardón’s model was questioned. The analysis carried out by the organization identified lack of technical, legal and economic viability studies in the management of the ring roadin addition to excessive interest charges by the private manager and “important differences” between the real costs and those invoiced by the City Council.
The M-30 is a road that surrounds the center of Madrid through a 32 kilometer ring, 10 of them underground. It constitutes the most extensive network of urban tunnels in Europe and the second in the world, after Japan. It is also the busiest road in Spain. In 2023, 374 million vehicles and 485 million users will use it, according to the City Council registry.
