The Greatest Grift of All (8): Norway's Greens Marvel at the True Cost of Their Planning
An extra-cringe look at how the Oslo metro area's Green transportation councillor ruined public transportation since 2022 while now marvelling at the consequences of her actions
Today, we continue down the rabbit hole of ‘when ideology meets reality™’ and return to Oslo, Norway. As reported at some length in mid-May, the gov’t has mandated all-EV buses for public (sic) transportation companies that are now faced with a Hobson’s choice of either raising ticket prices and/or cutting back their services.
At the very heart of this nonsense are the Greens whose uneducated and ideologically blinded politicos™ have been pushing ‘emissions-free™ zones’ for years (naturally, without first building enough EV charging stations, to say nothing about the required investments into the electric grid) while, at the same time, the nat’l gov’t is going all-in on fossil fuel production.
Now, the chicken are seemingly coming home to roost: as the human-made EV mandates are poised to massively increase ticket prices, legacy media predictably fails to enquire about the most basic things:
In the end, as is typically case in Eurosocialist countries like Norway, people are offered a binary choice: either accept higher prices and worse service (by public [sic] transport companies, no less) or have the state become an even larger player (public [sic] spending was north of 60% of GDP in 2024) than it already is.
Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.
Public Transport Crisis ‘in the making’: Oslo’s Ruter is 370 million NOK [c. US$ 37m] in the Red
Bus passengers in Akershus have the most to fear, but Oslo could also see route cuts and more expensive tickets.
By Olav Juven, NRK, 4 June 2025 [source]
Crisis or no crisis?
That was the question posed by Oslo City Council’s transport committee on Wednesday afternoon.
The CEO of Ruter [the public transportation bus company by the counties of Oslo (the city) and Akershus (the Oslo metro area); the tramway lines are owned and operated by Sporveien and its subway subsidiary T-banen] told the committee that he will need NOK 370 million extra to run buses, trams, boats, and trains in Oslo and Akershus next year.
‘There's a public transport crisis in the making’, said city councillor Marit Kristine Vea (Venstre [Norway’s Liberals]), adding ‘in Oslo, but especially in other counties’, she added [so, whatever follows here, it’s way worse beyond the Oslo metro area].
Vea went on to say that there is no question of weakening public transport services in the capital in 2025.
But she gave no guarantees for next year.
Fewer Buses in Akershus?
‘There’s no acute crisis right now’, said Bernt Reitan Jenssen, CEO of Ruter.
The message was primarily aimed at the relevant audience, namely the politicians in Oslo [ah, you see, this is all about posturing, then, eh?].
Ruter is also responsible for public transport in the neighbouring county:
‘And Akershus is where the biggest challenges lie’, Reitan Jenssen emphasised.
Here, they will be short of around NOK 90 million [some US$ 9m] to run buses next year. This is less than in Oslo, but in return Akershus has far less money to spend.
County politicians have already increased ticket prices by more than the normal price increase.
On Wednesday, Bernt Reitan Jenssen had this to say about Akershus:
I don’t see that they can continue to finance their services. They are having problems already this year with either realising relatively significant price increases, reducing services, or both.
This should also worry Oslo, according to the Ruter CEO [remember: Ruter is a public company owned by Oslo county (60%) and Akershus county (40%); it’s not as if this is a venture capitalist plague of locusts out to fleece the customer…oh, wait]:
If Akershus is not put in a position to continue increasing the number of buses into Oslo—and instead ends up in a situation where it has to cut them—car traffic will also increase in Oslo [a classic case of fuck around, find out, it would seem; I’ll note that while this seems like ‘first-world problems, why should I care?’, consider this: Norway is among the richest countries with some of the most generous welfare states on this planet—this is how much (ahem) the powers-that-be care about John Q. Public].
Extraordinary Price Growth
Bernt Reitan Jenssen said that more money from the state is absolutely crucial in order to maintain public transport services in Akershus [and, as predictable as day follows night, the conventional call is, and always has been in my own Norwegian experience, to cry for the nanny state].
This was also the message from county councillors around the country on NRK in May. They sounded the alarm and warned of more expensive and poorer public transport services [I’ve reported on this: the two relevant postings are linked at the top of today’s posting].
The background is that most things related to public transport have become even more expensive than ordinary price growth [to put this into context: as per Statistics Norway, the CPI stands at 2.5% (May 2025, relative to May 2024), and while I remain wary about any kind of official numbers, I merely note here that the CPI has risen by little over 20% since 2019 and a whopping 33.6% in the past decade].
In many counties, this is particularly linked to the requirement to switch to zero-emission buses [here is, once more and as reported earlier this spring, the proximal cause of these ‘extraordinary’ price increases: it’s human-made, no doubt about that, but now the same people (politicos™) who made these requirements refuse to pay for them, which holds an abject lesson about accountability and the term ‘public’ in both public servants and public services].
Minus 270m NOK [c. US$ 27m] in Oslo
In Oslo, virtually all buses are already electric [yep, and that’s kinda troublesome when temperatures fall in winter as range and quality of services decrease significantly, as I summarised in Jan. 2024 over at TKP.at (use the in-built Google Translation feature, if needed)].
Nevertheless, the gap between expenditure and income is widening here too [oh, would you look at that: ‘virtually all buses are already electric’, yet somehow™ the gov’t dares to claim that if customers pay even more, they get the same services? I’d call this an extortion racket].
According to Ruter, public transport in Oslo has an unmet need of around NOK 270 [c. US$ 27m] million in 2026 [an ‘unmet need’, that’s almost funny™, eh? How about John Q. Public’s ‘unmet needs’ in terms of, say, mortgage payments, car loans, and the like? If this would’t reek of mismanagement and incompetence combined with irresponsibility, it would almost be (tragi)comically hilarious…speaking of who is the human responsible for that kind of policy?].
Sirin Stav (MDG [that’s Norway’s Greens who, if current polling proves to be accurate, won’t make it back to parliament come autumn]), chair of the transport committee, wanted to know if this means a reduction in services, i.e., route cuts [ah, you see, the policy of mandating so-called ‘zero-emissions’ buses was put in place by (drum-roll)…Sirin Stav of the Green Party with quite some fanfare back in January 2023 who now, since we appear to live in an Orwellian kind of never-ending present, is either pretending to be surprised or she’s that stupid].
‘It’s too early to say how we’ll solve this’, said Marit Kristine Vea [of Venstre, Norway’s Liberals], city councillor for transport, highlighting several alternatives:
Option one is that an already-stretched coffers must be further depleted.
Option two is that the much richer state provides more support [money].
But route cuts and more expensive tickets are also among the options that will be considered, says the transportation councillor:
A third option is to reduce services. A fourth option is to increase ticket revenues [sic; remember, we’re talking a publicly owned and operated service company]. And a fifth option is a mix of these options [if I were a betting man, option #5 is gonna happen].
395 Million Journeys
One thing is certain: a poorer public transport service in Oslo and Akershus is something many people will notice.
Ruter registered 395 million public transport journeys in the two counties last year [I know politicos™ and journos™ loath it with a vengeance, but shall we do some math for a moment? According to Ruter.no., a single-trip ticket costs 44 NOK (some US$ 4.4), which, if we take that as a point of departure, theoretically yields 17.38 billion NOK (or some US$ 1.7b), and these numbers are staggering when compared to other major cities: Oslo and Akershus counties have a combined residential population of some 1.5m people; by comparison, Berlin’s public transport company BVG has some 1.24b passengers per year (2024) and turns over some 1.4b euros per year (numbers via Wikipedia); we note that the Berlin metro area has some 4.7m inhabitants and BVG services a much larger and more complex network of stops; note that this back-of-the-envelope calculation is likely (way) off as commuters would have season/yearly passes, but I’m including this calculation here for that comparative purpose)]
The Oslo metro alone has more passengers than all Norwegian trains combined [annually].
Bottom Lines
As funny™ not funny as these pieces are, I’m not providing them to gloat. I’m a resident of Norway and I’m paying taxes here—and this is what I’m seeing:
The politico™ in charge (sic) of public transportation is on Sirin Hellvin Stav of the Green Party: ever wondered what her expertise (if any) is? According to her Wikipedia profile (no dedicated party website profile exists), she was born in 1988 has been enrolled—that is, studying™—at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NTNU) in Trondheim—‘since 2013’. Ms. Stav’s LinkedIn profile indicates study years from 2013-17 and a programme in ‘Urban and Regional Planning’, as well as a year abroad at the Humboldt U in Berlin, Germany (2012-13).
As a student, Ms. Stav worked at the Tourism Office in Oslo (2008-11) and a few months as ‘researcher’ at SINTEF, a technology transfer think tank in Trondheim, before joining party-affiliated lines of work™ in Oslo.
That’s it in terms of work experience. Here’s a bit more about Ms. Stav (courtesy of the Internet Archive):
Sirin Hellvin Stav (born 1988) is studying [still] towards a master’s degree in urban and regional planning at NMBU [so, Ms. Stav may be not exactly open about her education™, and I do think she may hold an undergraduate degree], and sits on the boards of Sagene and Oslo Green Party groups. She grew up in Kjelsås and lives in Torshov.
Sirin wants to work for greener communities and a better quality of life, among other things, by making it easy to make environmentally friendly choices in everyday life and facilitating green mobility [re-read the above piece to learn how good Ms. Stav is at this]. To achieve this, she believes it is essential to reverse the transport hierarchy and take back the streets.
‘I want to work for good, green urban spaces with more space and facilities for people of all ages, cyclists, wildlife, cultural life, and local businesses. Multimodal mobility in cities is more sustainable and works better for all road user groups, including motorists. This ensures better accessibility for many more people, safer transport, and more pleasant and vibrant neighbourhoods. Dense local environments with green lungs are the way to a healthier and more people-friendly city [Ms. Stav has had quite a bit (too much) of the 15-minute city kool-aid, it would seem]. Green communities are the way to both increased quality of life and global sustainability.’
Why am I bringing this up? I’m not doing this because I have a personal vendetta against Ms. Stav or anyone; I’m doing this because in the above-related contexts, she is a core player in this farce.
As I documented back in early 2023, it was the very same Ms. Stav who introduced these measures:
‘I am happy to receive this professional basis for one of Oslo's most important climate measures’, says Sirin Stav, city councillor for the environment and transport (MDG), in a press release…
The Norwegian Environmental Agency also points out that a well-developed charging infrastructure is needed before a zero-emissions zone can be introduced. In 2022, the municipality only managed to build 11 charging stations.
The zero emission zone will help to cut emissions in Oslo. The municipality has decided that emissions must be cut by 95 per cent by 2030, compared to 2009 levels.
Find the rest of that story™ here:
I’m posting these contextualising snippets of information to drive home a few points:
When it suits the clowns-masquerading-as-powers-that-be, they denounce everyone who’s not an expert™ (while, very often, these clowns themselves lack credentials and/or work experience)
Ms. Stav is the competent city councillor responsible for the mandating of emissions-free™ buses, hence she is also the politico™ responsible for the ‘mix’ of all of the above measures (price hikes, less services, etc.)
Yet somehow™, none of the background—even though (sic) it was once upon a time reported™ by the very same state broadcaster—made it into yet another acute™ crisis, which is how these ideologically blind maniacs operate
Even if the worst is to be avoided this year, the coming implementation of further mandatory emissions cuts™ will not be changed:
Needless to say, these policies are failing ‘already’ as EV adoption is, by and large, a function of gov’t subsidies; with these having been reduced drastically as of 1 July 2023, demand™ for EVs has fallen off a cliff.
Hence, these totalitarians are going to do—that which they always wanted to do in the first place but couldn’t because they’d be chased out of town:
What could John Q. Public do about it?
I suppose bringing back tarring and feathering and/or other forms of the pillory might be the only option here.
#bringbackshaming
Governmental policies are ultimately a mixture of prime aims (e.g. population reduction), ideology, stupidity and perhaps local flavor.
I'm quite certain things are the same in Norway as they are here. So I say this as if it was a proven fact:
The companies, whether private or public or hybrid, collect customer data on every route so that they can see where the load is heaviest/most profitable routes and times of day. With electronic devices it's even easier.
(Seems so sensible it doesn't need saying, no?)
And then they ignore that data, because the buses are "supposed to" follow certain routes that they always have done. Despite changing circumstances.
Example from Malmö is one busline which was one of the first ones in the city. It transported workers from a working-class district directly to the docks (this is when Malmö was thriving ship&auto-building city). The docks and wharfs and so on were all shuttered by the time the 1990s rolled around.
That line still runs to this day, following the same route "just because". And no-one has it as theor job to run a logistics-analysis of where the city needs bus lines, how many, what route schedule is optimal and so on.
It is the same here in the country. Buses run on the times they always have, and follow the same routes as 50 or 100 years ago.
That is a much larger problem than EV-adoption, because with the proper economy of resource management, even EV-buses could work (except in Winter or when the power's out).
Where I live, three daily buses would be plenty enough. One early, for the school kids and people not starting work until 0830 or later. One mid-day for pensioners and such going to the store. And one evening, say ca 1800 or so. The buses normally used can take as many as ca 100 passengers; on a day with many riding the bus, there's about 10-15. The option to get 30-passenger buses does not exist, because the companies hired don't any of that kind. Instead, they run some routes using mini-buses. Sardine-cans on wheels. If you have a baby-carriage or a wheelchair, you're SOL. Wait for the next one.
It all needs scrapping down to barebones basic, and the notion that kids can't walk 3km or ride a bike 10km or that parents can't car-pool and drive their kids to school needs to go DIAF.