If you build it they will screw you

With my birthday now passed I had to do the unpleasant duty of renewing my Ontario drivers license and plate sticker for the car. It is never a fun task but pick a good time and it is only money. Not this year. Before getting my new sticker I had to pay up an old debt on the only toll road in this fair country. From 1999. I fought that bogus and overpriced charge way back then, was forced to pay it anyway, and then forgot about it. Not only did a $40 charge quickly jump to $110 back then apparently they screwed up once more and it became $381 in 2008. That toll road is a privately owned highway that should have nothing to do with my car taxes.

But what does this sordid tale have to do with Iceland? I’ll tell you, toll roads and how they get built and how they are run. I’m so mad I don’t feel like digging up the stories but last year I read a plan to build a major highway through the highlands of Iceland. A beautiful but utterly unforgiving area of the country. Instead of driving around the ring road you could have the luxury of driving through the middle and saving several hours off the time between Reykjavík and Akureyri. But you would have to pay a hefty toll for that and no doubt miss most of the beauty that abounds. After all, what’s the point of saving time if you stop to smell the roses sulfur? And if you are paying for the drive then you want to get the full value, i.e. point A to point B and forget about the in between.

The real problem is how these roads get there in the first place. The planned road was turned down for environmental reasons so no worries just yet. But that plan will come back and they might get their way in the long run. What struck me was the mention of the company that was going to run the toll road. Happens to be the same one that runs the evil highway over here that is the object of my rage.

A brief history on what happened here and could easily happen in Iceland. What was once mapped out as a future highway decades earlier became a toll road in more recent times. A very expensive highway through sensitive land that as usual cut off smaller roads that were never rebuilt. The automated systems didn’t work right for several years and eventually the cost burden was too much. So for pennies on the dollar it was sold to a private company (same company planning the Iceland road). The tax payers were royally screwed again. The toll cost is the highest by far of any toll road I’ve ever heard of. The company contracts what feels like a mafia style system to get that money from the poor souls that use it. To get even more money they have constant issues with their bookkeeping and will charge you several times the already outrageous price if you are just an occasional user without their magic ‘transponder’.

So watch out my Icelandic cousins, you just might pay to build a highway which is then taken away from you and given to the mafia who will screw you all over again. All in legal concert with the greedy politicians. As if the rape of the countryside isn’t enough reason to stop this kind of greedy construction.

I have been out of touch with my own blog for far too long. Sorry folks, a crush of work and other un-pleasantries has caused me to go into a writing drought combined with writer’s block. With so much bad news and an election down in Dixie/Yankee land that in my mind [...]

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The Icelander loves his/her swimming pool. Mostly outdoor pools, little or no chlorine (please wash yourself), heated by the geothermal goodness beneath their feet. A hot day that we might consider a swim is very rare in Iceland so they go swimming not to cool off but to warm up.
Imagine taking in the [...]

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So nice to hear about these message in a bottle stories. Much nicer than gooey pollution and dead fish. An old fashioned and even romantic thing these stories.

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