Please, take my money as I drive past

This is what the majority of the people in Oslo and Bergen say.

Graphs showing the %
of people for and against
the toll systems, and
parking fees

Graphs from Bergens
Tidende, search conducted
by CICERO

The survey data I found in the newspaper
Bergens Tidende this morning was surprising
to say the least. Over 60% of people in
Bergen actually wants to pay taxes to drive
into the city!! As if the motorists in Norway
aren't overtaxed already. The results show the
Norwegian trend of overtrusting their
government that the taxes are spent wisely.

But is this really the case?

Another newspaper, the Aftenposten
published an article in September 2011 that
more than half the money payed by
motorists on the new E18 automatic toll
system disappears into administrative and
financing costs. This means that, even though
the automatic toll systems were implemented
to pay to recover the construction cost of the
road, less than half the money payed by
drivers is actually being used for that purpose.
I don't have the exact figure for Bergen, but I
would also assume similar statistics.
Moreover, part of that money is being used to
finance public transport, and too little money is
being spent on road maintenance. If I have not
made my point already,
I am against the toll charges for that very
reason.

The graph on the right shows the survey results
by CICERO,a Norwegian environmental
research sentre. The top two graphs shows the
percentage of people in large cities who favour
the toll systems and those who are against. The
bottom two show those in favour for mandatory parking fees
of minimum 15 NOK/hour to be charged at workplaces and
in shopping malls.

The results showed that people have more sences when it comes to the issue of parking. Around 80% of the people are against the obligatory parking fees to be charged at workplaces and shopping malls. To date, I have never heard of any country in which the government forces workplaces and shopping malls to actually charge their employees / customers for parking.

Of course, I support free parking as well, and I was relieved that the majority of Norwegians agree...but the reason for doing so was very Norwegian. According to the newspaper article, people are skeptical to paying to park at work and at malls because "the money just goes right into the pockets of the mall owners". Well, well......

What do you think? feel free to leave a comment below!!

"Folk sier ja til bompenger"