The Greatest Grift of All (10): Green Stupidity Bonus Edition
If paying more in taxes and fees had any measurable effect on politicians' abilities to come up with a balanced budget, would we still have these discussions?
And just like this, we must, sadly yet once again, talk about the utter insanity of public transport ticket prices and virtue-signalling stupidity made in, and esp. by, the Greens in Oslo, Norway.
We’ve talked about this before, and now we’ll do it again, sadly, because we have to; I’ve covered this particular aspect in detail in the past weeks, and you may obtain additional background by clicking on the below-linked posting:
Today, I’ve got a very special posting for you—for state broadcaster NRK gave a prominent voice to the person who’s quite likely most responsible for this utter nonsense, Green politico™ Sirin Stav.
Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine. Plus the eye-rolling.
Greens Want to Increase Tolls to Prevent Public Transport Crisis
‘Tolls won’t be safe’, says the Greens’ Oslo leader. Next year, Oslo and Akershus will be short of 370 million kroner for public transport.
By Olav Juven, NRK, 11 June 2025 [source]
‘A public transport crisis is brewing’, said Marit Kristine Vea (Venstre [Liberals]), Oslo’s city councillor for environment and transport, last week [find out ‘more’ here].
At the time, Ruter [that would be Oslo’s public transport company] CEO Bernt Reitan Jenssen had just painted a bleak picture of the financial situation for public transport in Oslo and Akershus [that’s the suburban county outside Oslo].
He told Oslo’s transport politicians that Ruter needs NOK 370 million [approx. US$ 37m] to run buses, trams, boats, and trains next year.
Around 270 million of this is Oslo’s problem.
Route Cuts and More Expensive Tickets
According to Marit Vea, there are five ways to cover the funding gap:
More money from the state
More money from the municipality
Cuts in services
Increased ticket prices
A combination of these [my money is on this option, with perhaps very little from the state]
‘But there is another option,’ says the Greens’ Sirin Stav. She is the party's group leader in the city council and also chairs the municipal transportation committee.
Namely, higher tolls [road-pricing].
Wants to have higher tolls: the Greens’ party leader in the Oslo municipal assembly, Sirin Stav [making, presumably, many new friends and voters with that move].
Stav takes the opportunity to criticise the city council for giving up room for manoeuvre by cutting property tax and giving in to asphalt demands from the Progress Party [that’s another quite wild issue in Oslo: the previous red-green city gov’t kinda refused to spend nearly enough on keeping the city’s roads paved, and with the bad economic situation right now, there are cuts to everything but paving, and the current debate is all about re-allocation of tight funding towards, among other things, public transport].
And of course we hope that the state and the government will come up with the money [huhum, where would that money come from?]. But if that doesn’t happen, we'll have to look at the possibility of adjusting the tolls to avoid cuts [a brilliant plan: Ms. Stav was instrumental in creating these problems™, and now she wishes to increase road-pricing: a perfect example of dialectic politicking…]
Negative Spiral
She says that poorer and more expensive public transport will lead to a negative spiral with more car traffic [that’s totally obvious].
And more queues, congestion, and chaos, according to Stav:
We must leave no stone unturned to avoid this. In that case, tolls cannot be sacrosanct.
[NRK] But if the problem is that public transport lacks money, wouldn’t it be more natural for public transport passengers to pay more, and not motorists?
[Sirin Stav] It’s absolutely crucial that we improve services for those travelling by public transport. Three out of four journeys in Oslo are by public transport, bicycle, or walking. Increased traffic in the city creates problems for everyone [huhum, isn’t the city centre technically a so-called ‘emissions-free zone’, courtesy of the red-green coalition?]
The Gap Will Widen
According to Ruter’s CEO Bernt Reitan Jenssen, the financial problems in the public transport sector are due to extraordinarily high price growth [ah, is it time to talk about shitty gov’t policies with respect to inflation now?] combined with underfunding from the state over time [oh, nope, the bogeyman is the national gov’t not forking over enough taxpayer money: we must never talk about mismanagement, though].
Ruter itself believes it will be able to realise efficiency gains of NOK 500 [approx. US$ 50m] million annually from 2027.
Nevertheless, Bernt Reitan Jenssen said that the gap will only increase in the years to come [meant is the funding gap right now (2025/26), with these efficiency gains (if they materialise) of course being a future perk].
Oslo Package No. 3
Marit Vea was asked about the possibility of covering part of this with tolls at the meeting last Wednesday.
This will require a new round of negotiations on the major toll package, Oslopakke 3.
Oslo and Akershus politicians have already agreed that motorists will have to pay NOK 93 billion [divide by 10 to arrive at US$ equivalents] in tolls over the next 20 years [the most patently absurd thing about road-pricing in Norway is this: major infrastructure projects are typically done as public-private partnership whereby the funds are raised by awarding, in exchange for payment, contractors the right privilege to collect tolls from drivers; the idea behind is that once the debt is paid off, there’s no more need to have toll roads—but no such road-pricing arrangement has ever been scrapped; moreover, politicos™ use tolls to de-incentivise people from driving their own cars, which over time decreases the usefulness of tolls to make a profit—and the successful use of road-pricing to reduce driving is then used to justify™ higher tolls because otherwise the private company that runs the road-pricing scheme won’t make enough revenues™].
In the longer term, I think we also need to look at the toll contribution. That almost goes without saying [that’s Marit Vea from the Liberals™].
But that agreement [Oslopakke 3] was renegotiated last year. I don’t think it’s wise to initiate a renegotiation of the agreement immediately.
Normally, Oslo Package 3 is renegotiated every four years.
Bottom Lines
As day follows night, stupid decisions require yet more stupid proposals to make up. The case of the public transportation crisisâ„¢ in the Oslo metro area is a prime example of this nonsense.
Mandate additional obligations from bus companies, which will have to raise prices—and then bitch and moan about the consequences.
There’s little surprise here that it looks as if the Greens won’t make the 4 per cent threshold in the upcoming nat’l elections come autumn (good riddance).
Problem is, though, that the Greenâ„¢ nonsense has infected all other parties, too, and none of them differs markedly from the stupid nonsense pushed by the Greens.
So, prices will continue to go up, public (sic) services will be reduced, and no politicoâ„¢ will be held accountable.
None of this is surprising, none of this will change.
While the end of the current régime’s runway is inching closer, we’re not there. Yet.
And remember—John Q. Public is ‘asked’ to pay a bit more here and there to save the climate™, and these demands come from politicos™ who prove, every time, that they can’t manage the public’s coffers.
But this time, things will be different, right? Right.
Morons.