The Socialist Party's city council faction rejects road tolls

Our common funds; taxes, should pay for transport infrastructure, as well as other necessary infrastructure development. The tax burden has been shifted from the rich and corporations onto the shoulders of low-wage earners, and when we do not tax those who are able to pay, a large part of our common funds is missing to cover this basic infrastructure. Reykjavík City's housing policy has also forced people with fewer financial means to move to the suburbs and to adjacent municipalities. This is due to insufficient social and non-profit development and an emphasis on luxury apartments and hotels. In the system that the city has maintained, land speculators have been able to profit excessively at the expense of ever-increasing housing prices.

Now, express and traffic fees are to be imposed on main roads, which will hit hardest those who need to commute to work in the city center and live in the city's suburbs. These fees are, of course, also proportionally much higher for those with fewer financial means, and there is a risk that we are going to create yet another factor that distinguishes different social classes. On the one hand, there will be people who can afford to run a car, and on the other hand, people who are forced to take the bus. We should, of course, make the bus a good and realistic option that is fully capable of attracting passengers, rather than forcing people with fewer financial means to use it due to economic circumstances.

On these and other grounds, the Socialist Party's city council faction (Borgarstjórnarflokkur sósíalista) is completely opposed to these proposed road tolls. We believe that it is possible to build a good transport system; to do so, we need to rebuild the tax system and move away from the ideology of 'user pays' and back to the path of 'those who can pay'.