Why no road wear fee before 2018?

The Swedish Green Party promised before the election to introduce a kilometer tax for truck traffic. Stefan Löfven has said that road wear fees, another name for kilometer taxes, will finance the expansion of roads and railroads.
But the infrastructure minister Anna Johansson announced a while back that “road wear fees have proven to be complicated to implement due to legal and technical reasons” and that this kind of tax will not be introduced during this mandate up to 2018.

I think that this is entirely wrong. Why should it not be possible to implement this in Sweden? It works in several other countries. And complex legal and technical reasons do not seem to be an obstacle once the decision has been made. Just look at the introduction of congestion taxes here in Gothenburg. It went in no time at all.

When it comes to the road wear fee, I think that it should be a part of the vehicle tax. Both occupational as well as civil traffic pay for their vehicle taxes and fuel here in Sweden. But foreign vehicles do not pay anything. That makes the competition distorted.
When we are abroad, in Germany for example, we have to pay road wear fees because we don’t pay any vehicle taxes there.

Finally, I look forward to following Örgryte IS in the upcoming qualifiers to Superettan. From the looks of it now, with two rounds left, they will meet either former Swedish League team Mjällby AIF or IK Frej from Täby. 

Photo: Mitten via Wikimedia Commons