Solvik-Olsen sets the toll collection record

toll collection recordToll collection record.Photo: Heiko Junge / NTB scanpix

No Minister of Transport has collected as much tolls as Ketil Solvik-Olsen. During his 1000 days in government, there has been 24.4 billion collected.

That is roughly six billion more than Liv Signe Navarsete got during his 1,460 days as head of the Ministry of Transportation, newspaper VG reported. Solvik-Olsen also set a record for the amount collected per day, at 24.4 million. Second place goes to predecessor Marit Arnstad, who collected 21 million daily. It should be noted that the amounts are not adjusted for inflation.

The toll record stands in sharp contrast to the election promise of the party’s former transport policy spokesman Bård Hoksrud, in summer of 2013 when he promised that the country would be toll-free.

– It is important to remember that the government has surpassed the goals set in the National Transport Plan. These goals were adopted in 2013 with a red-green majority in Parliament, and it is them who have laid down guidelines for projects to be financed by tolls, says Hoksrud today.

As toll road projects may extend over the next several years, giving Parliament’s assessment they declare him right in that it is “not necessarily any correlation between who has been Minister of Transport and how much tolls that have been collected in a given period.”

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today