The Norwegian road system has been built up over generations. It is worth at least NOK 1,000 billion, but as a nation we are nowhere near using what is needed to take care of what has been created. These days, the Norwegian roads are filled with Norwegians on their way to cabins, holiday homes and family visits in other parts of the country. We move on a road system longer than twice around the equator. It is built up through 400 years of hard work by our ancestors. The road systems connect districts, municipalities, counties and parts of the country. It makes us one people and it helps us to interact with the outside world. Nevertheless, Norwegian politicians choose to prioritize the operation and maintenance of the country’s lifeblood. Lack of appropriations for special maintenance is inherited between different governments and different ministers of transport and finance. Our national fortune gets more and more bumps, cracks, tears and ugly wounds every single year. Many have tried to calculate the size of the maintenance backlog on our road systems. That is a minimum of NOK 100 billion. The annual state budgets are not close to allocating what is needed. Nevertheless, 2022 is one of the worst years in Norwegian road history. In the state budget, NOK 3.2 billion was set aside for operation and maintenance from the Norwegian Public Roads Administration’s budget. It’s too little already in the first place. A pandemic and a war in Europe have inflicted huge price increases on road owners and contractors who operate and maintain roads. The Norwegian Public Roads Administration has estimated that the price increase will eat up NOK 600 million of the budget. A tight budget suddenly becomes 20 percent tighter. What is the Government doing? How many millions did they go in to compensate for parts of this loss and prevent a further backlog of operation and maintenance in the revised state budget? They allocated – believe it or not – NOK 50 million less in the revised national budget than in the original budget. The government is thus cutting NOK 50 million in a maintenance budget which in a few months has in reality been weakened by NOK 600 million. The cuts will inflict even greater wounds and damage on our national wealth. The 2022 maintenance was to take place this summer, but must therefore be cut drastically due to the price increase and the Government’s unwillingness to take action. The cuts do not only destroy the roads. They also create huge problems for the people who make a living operating and maintaining these roads. Norwegian machine contractors are in a major crisis due to the prices of diesel and other input factors. We have a government that makes the crisis even bigger by doing less work. The government that promised the district jobs good conditions The race has been run for 2022. Now those who build and maintain Norwegian roads are sitting with their hearts in their throats in anticipation of the 2023 budget. The government has already announced significant cuts. In addition, we know that poor summer maintenance makes it even more difficult to have good winter roads in the winter nation of Norway. If there are any machine contractors who are able to provide services to a public sector that must get even more out of even less in the months ahead. The government is making transport the big cut sector. Is it because partner SV is not particularly fond of roads? Is it because the Government believes that it is easier to treat road wealth carelessly than to distribute the cuts in different areas? As CEO of the Norwegian Drivers’ Association (MEF), with 2300 members who build Norwegian infrastructure night and day, I will use the summer to remind the Government of what is at stake when they meet for their budget conference in August. If they take their cuts seriously, there will be fewer new roads and poorer maintenance of the roads we have. Road wealth is deteriorating. In addition, the Government has not yet done anything to help a construction industry in crisis due to the rise in diesel prices and other input factors. Those who drive on Norwegian summer roads in 2022 may not think so much about exactly this in these hectic summer days. But the party that rightly takes its share of the credit for building the country (Labor) and the party that is so fond of Norwegian local communities (Sp), should spend the summer asking themselves if they intend to let the decay of our roads become a of the landmarks of this Government. All local politicians we meet from the Labor Party and the Socialist People’s Party say the opposite: They want to save small diesel-dependent construction companies and maintain the road allocations. Then we will see if Jonas Gahr Støre and Trygve Slagsvold Vedum listen to them.
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Ugly bumps in our common fortune – Expression
