Debate, Politics | Oslo will not be improved by poorer cycle paths

Newly elected leader of the Oslo Frp, Arve Lønnum, and the party’s city council representative Ingeborg Bjørnevik are concerned about traffic safety in Stationsveien by Slemdal school, especially in winter when the pavement is both narrow and slippery. So am I, but it is not a problem to do with the cycleway construction, as they seem to think.

That sidewalk has been a bottleneck for as long as residents in the area can remember. I know that this is a problem that the Vestre Aker district is concerned with, and they are in dialogue with the Urban Environment Agency about reducing the speed to 30 km/h past the school. In addition, two of the intersections in Stationsveien have been tightened and the signal-regulated pedestrian crossing at the school has been made safer.

The FRP would not be the FRP if they were not concerned with road maintenance in Oslo. It is miserable after eight years of red-green government. We agree on that, and as part of the cooperation agreement between the four civic parties, the city council will put forward an escalation plan to catch up with road maintenance.

Nor would the FRP be the FRP if they were not critical of the bicycle investment in recent years. We are too, but where we want to make better arrangements for cycling by building continuous cycle paths while at the same time taking into account those who do not cycle, the FRP will reverse “the worst outcomes” of cycling policy.

I am unsure whether the FRP believes that Oslo municipality should use people’s tax money to remove cycle paths. We’re not going to do that anyway.

We have become over 200,000 more in Oslo since the turn of the millennium.

We cannot rely on people driving to get around. Therefore, we must make it so attractive to travel by public transport, cycle and walk that people leave their cars as often as they can. Therefore, we will reduce the price of the monthly pass, and prioritize work that provides a coherent and safe cycle path network.

Then conflicts will arise, as in Eventyrveien at Ullevål. But instead of removing all the car parking spaces, as was the red-green plan, we found a flexible solution which both means that it is better to cycle, while at the same time preserving almost 1/3 of the parking spaces.

Although it is not possible to make everyone happy, Oslo people will notice that this city council wants to find pragmatic and flexible solutions. The era of symbolic politics and where the removal of parking spaces from parking spaces was an end in itself is over.

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