Reykjavík, Iceland · Limited traffic zone
In force in Reykjavík right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 09:04 · Atlantic/Reykjavik
The delivery window — 07:00 to 11:00 Monday to Friday and 08:00 to 11:00 on Saturdays — is deliberately not encoded as a window when the restriction lifts. It is a permission for unloading by goods vehicles, not an open hour for everyone, and the samþykkt makes it site-specific: the binding time is the one on the sign at that street, and encoding a city-wide figure would tell an ordinary driver the street opens at 07:00 when it does not.
Reykjavík's own two statements of the delivery window do not agree about the weekend. The city's vörulosun page gives Saturdays 08:00 to 11:00 and names no Sunday; its November 2025 account of Austurstræti gives 'weekends' 08:00 to 11:00. Neither is encoded, both are quoted in the hours field, and the difference is left visible rather than resolved by us.
This encoding says when the restriction is in force, not where you are. We do not hold the zone as geometry — Reykjavík draws it on a map layer in its own viewer and publishes no dataset — so the warning is at city level and a driver still has to read the signs at the street ends.
No public-holiday rule is encoded. The samþykkt names none, and no Icelandic holiday calendar is held in this corpus; inventing an exemption would be worse than having none.
The scheme is not a fixed list frozen in 2022. Reykjavík adds streets — Austurstræti was opened as a göngugata on 3 November 2025 — and the samþykkt's Article 10 lets the planning and transport committee set special provisions for particular pedestrian streets that override the general text. The signs at the street are the authority a driver meets.
Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.
Reykjavík's göngugötur — pedestrian streets — are a ban rather than a charge, and the ban is the default: in a street the city has designated a göngugata, driving a motor vehicle is not allowed at all, and no fee, emission class or time of day buys a general right of entry.
The rule lives in the Samþykkt um göngugötur í Reykjavík, which the city council adopted on 6 September 2022 under Articles 10, 84 and 86 of the Icelandic road traffic act, umferðarlög nr. 77/2019.
Article 2 of the samþykkt lists the four ways a motor vehicle may lawfully be in one: those specially permitted by Article 10 of the traffic act itself, the city's own service vehicles, residents and businesses holding a göngugötukort under Article 4, and anyone holding a one-off afnotaleyfi from the city under Article 5.
A fifth category comes from the city's own account of the newest street: holders of a disabled parking card, stæðiskort hreyfihamlaðra, are exempt from the driving ban, and police, ambulance and fire service have unrestricted access. Whoever is admitted drives at no more than 10 km/h, gives way to people on foot, and may not park except in marked bays.
The göngugötukort is not a season ticket sold at a price: it is issued for a parking space, one card per space, and only where the approved planning puts that space on a back lot reachable no other way than through a pedestrian street.
Deliveries are the one door that opens on a clock — motor-vehicle unloading is permitted between 07:00 and 11:00 Monday to Friday and between 08:00 and 11:00 on Saturdays, with the exact window shown on the sign at the street, and delivery without a motor vehicle, by cargo bike or electric trolley, is allowed at any hour. The sanction is national rather than municipal: reglugerð nr.
1240/2019 prices unauthorised motor traffic in a göngugata at ISK 20,000 under Article 10 of the traffic act, with a 25% discount for payment within 30 days. The scheme is live and it grows: Austurstræti, from Pósthússtræti to Ingólfstorg, was formally opened as a göngugata on 3 November 2025, making one continuous pedestrian area from Lækjartorg to Ingólfstorg, in line with the Kvosin traffic plan approved in 2020.
Reykjavíkurborg — the city's own service page for göngugötur, which states in the authority's voice that the rules governing the use of pedestrian streets are those of the samþykkt the city council adopted on 6 September 2022, and which sets out the resident's göngugötukort, the one-card-per-parking-space rule, the delivery window, disabled parking, emergency access and the 10 km/h walking pace
There is no daily charge in this scheme, and the absence is the rule's design rather than a gap in our reading: a göngugata is closed to motor traffic, so there is nothing to buy a day of.
Reykjavík sells no day pass, no entry ticket and no emission-based exemption; the samþykkt names four ways in and every one of them is a status — permitted by Article 10 of the traffic act, a city service vehicle, a resident's or business's göngugötukort, or a one-off usage permit — never a payment. One thing is deliberately not claimed.
The city publishes no price for the göngugötukort itself: its service page and its April 2026 notice about applying through Mínar síður both describe who may have one and how to apply, and neither states a fee, so what a resident pays for the card, if anything, is not stated by the publisher and is not supplied here.
Compare Tirana, where the authority's own service register says 'Pa pagesë' in as many words; Reykjavík says nothing either way, and 'free' would be our inference, not the city's statement. Not estimated. The money that is published in this scheme is a fine, not a charge, and it is in the penalty field.
The honest answer to 'when does this apply?' is: always. A göngugata in Reykjavík is closed to motor vehicles at every hour of every day; the samþykkt attaches no window to the prohibition and no hour at which the street reopens to everyone. The clock in this scheme governs deliveries, and deliveries only.
Reykjavík states the delivery window in its own words: unloading times on pedestrian streets in the city are between 07:00 and 11:00 Monday to Friday and between 08:00 and 11:00 on Saturdays, and in a göngugata unloading is permitted only within the defined unloading times shown on the traffic sign at that street.
Read the sign, because the samþykkt's Article 3 makes the window site-specific — it grants unloading 'at the unloading time specified for each place' and subjects it to whatever vehicle-size limit applies there, so the city-wide figures above are the general case and the sign is the particular one.
Reykjavík's own account of the newest pedestrian street, Austurstræti, states the window as seven to eleven on weekdays and eight to eleven at weekends, which is the same weekday rule and a wider weekend one than the general delivery page, whose Saturday figure is quoted above and whose text names no Sunday at all.
Where the two differ, the sign at the street decides, and that is what both pages tell the driver to read. Delivery without a motor vehicle — by electric cargo bike, electric trolley or a comparable device — is permitted outside the unloading window as well, which is the city's stated way of moving goods in at other hours.
Nothing in the scheme distinguishes a public holiday, and Iceland's public holidays are not held in this corpus, so none is encoded.
Reykjavíkurborg — the city's page on vörulosun, loading and unloading, which states the city-wide unloading window for pedestrian streets and the rule that in a göngugata unloading is only permitted within the defined times shown on the traffic sign at the street
Reykjavík defines its pedestrian streets street by street, and publishes the definitive extent as a layer on its own map viewer rather than as a list in the samþykkt — Article 1 says only that the samþykkt applies to pedestrian streets on roads Reykjavíkurborg maintains, leaving which streets those are to be designated separately and signed.
The streets the city names on its own pages are in the old centre, and they are these. Laugavegur, Vegamótastígur, Vatnsstígur and Skólavörðustígur are named as göngugötur on the city's service page, which points drivers to the four car parks nearest them — Stjörnuport, Vitatorg, Bergstaðir and Traðarkot.
Austurstræti, from Pósthússtræti to Ingólfstorg, joined them on 3 November 2025, and the city states the consequence in one sentence: there is now a continuous pedestrian area from Lækjartorg to Ingólfstorg. That change was made in line with the Kvosin traffic plan, umferðarskipulag Kvosarinnar, approved in 2020.
This list is what the publisher names, not a claim that it is exhaustive: Reykjavík also runs seasonal and temporary pedestrian streets — its own delivery page has a rule for the 'tímabundin göngugata' case — and the samþykkt lets the planning and transport committee set special provisions for individual streets. The authoritative answer for any particular street is the sign at its end, which reglugerð nr.
250/2024 requires at every entrance to a göngugata, and the city's map layer, linked in this record's boundary coverage.
Reykjavíkurborg — the city's news announcement of 4 November 2025 that Austurstræti was formally opened as a pedestrian street the previous day, which states the section, the resulting continuous pedestrian area from Lækjartorg to Ingólfstorg, the delivery hours, the exemption for holders of a disabled parking card, and unrestricted access for police, ambulance and fire service
The authority's own map: Reykjavíkurborg
There is no emission standard in this scheme for a petrol vehicle, because there is no emission standard in it at all, and that is measured rather than assumed. The whole text was read — all ten articles of the samþykkt, the national sign regulation nr. 250/2024 that creates the göngugata sign, and the fines regulation nr.
1240/2019 that sanctions it — and the rule reads two things off a vehicle, neither of them exhaust: whether it is motorised at all, and, for deliveries, whether it is within the size limit posted at that street. Euro class, year of first registration, fuel and emissions testing appear nowhere. A clean petrol car and a dirty one are barred alike, and admitted alike when their driver holds a göngugötukort.
That is what separates this record from Reykjavík's other air-quality instrument: reglugerð nr.
787/1999 does let the city's health board restrict traffic for short periods when pollution runs well over the limits, and Reykjavík's response plan names restricting studded-tyre and fossil-fuel vehicles among the measures it could take — but that is a standing power with no perimeter, no hours and no fine, and it is not this scheme. Not estimated: this is what the published text does not contain.
Nor a diesel standard, and for the same measured reason: the trigger is the street, not the fuel. Nothing in the samþykkt, in the sign regulation or in the fines table separates diesel from petrol, sets a Euro floor, or asks for a smoke-opacity result.
What the rule does separate are statuses — permitted under Article 10 of the traffic act, a city service vehicle, a resident's or business's göngugötukort, a one-off usage permit, a disabled parking card — and each of those is a person's entitlement, not an engine. Not estimated.
Stjórnarráðið / Dómsmálaráðuneytið — Reglugerðasafn on Ísland.is, reglugerð nr. 1240/2019 um sektir og önnur viðurlög vegna brota á umferðarlögum og reglum settum samkvæmt þeim. The fine is national rather than municipal: the city's samþykkt carries no penalty clause of its own, which is consistent with how the rule is built, since the prohibition is carried by a national traffic sign and the sanction for disobeying a sign sits in national law. This regulation tabulates fines by article of umferðarlög nr. 77/2019, and the block headed 'Göngugata (nýmæli í lögunum)' — a novelty in the act — prices its first paragraph, 'Óheimil umferð vélknúinna ökutækja um göngugötu', at 20,000 in the column the regulation itself heads 'Sektarfjárhæð kr.'. Two neighbouring lines carry the same figure and are worth knowing, because even a permitted driver can be fined: careless driving of a motor vehicle in a pedestrian street is 20,000, and careless cycling in one is also 20,000. Article 5 adds a discount that applies to all of them — the police chief must grant a 25% reduction where the fine and costs are paid in full within 30 days of the fine being issued. Offences the annexes do not list run from ISK 20,000 to ISK 500,000 according to their nature and extent, so 20,000 is the floor of the national scale as well as the figure for this one
Reykjavíkurborg — the city's service page for göngugötur, which is where the city sets out the resident's card, the back-lot condition, the one-card-per-space rule, the visible-display requirement, the occasional-use permission, the delivery window, disabled access, emergency access, the walking pace and the car parks
Reykjavíkurborg — the city's service page for göngugötur. The operative publisher statement for this record: that the rules governing the use of pedestrian streets in Reykjavík are those of the samþykkt the city council adopted on 6 September 2022, plus the city's own account of the resident's göngugötukort, the back-lot condition, the one-card-per-space rule, the delivery window, disabled and emergency access, the 10 km/h pace and the nearest car parks
Reykjavíkurborg — minutes of the city council meeting of 6 September 2022, borgarstjórn. The adoption proof and the reason this record has a date at all: item 1 of the 25 August minutes, the samþykkt um göngugötur í Reykjavík, is recorded as approved, under case number USK22060048. This is held because the act text the city serves cannot date itself — see the two PDFs below — so the minutes are the only dated, official statement that the samþykkt was adopted and when
Reykjavíkurborg — the text of the samþykkt as the city serves it from its own service page: ten articles, headed SAMÞYKKT UM GÖNGUGÖTUR Í REYKJAVÍK. Article 1 scope, Article 2 who may drive in, Article 3 unloading, Article 4 the resident's and business's göngugötukort, Article 5 the occasional usage permit, Articles 6 to 9 events, outdoor serving, street trading and signage, Article 10 the legal basis in Articles 10(1), 10(2), 84(1) and 86(2) of umferðarlög nr. 77/2019 and immediate entry into force. READ THE CAVEAT: this file is named 'Drög að samþykkt' — draft — and its closing line reads 'Samþykkt á fundi skipulags- og samgönguráðs þann XX. nóvember 2021 og á fundi borgarráðs þann XX. nóvember 2021', with the day left as XX. It is the text the city links as the samþykkt and the only full text it serves; the dates in this record come from the council minutes and from the city's own service page, never from this file. Watched from cycle 108: the act's title, the scope sentence of Article 1, the headings of Articles 2 to 5, the parking prohibition, the opening of the unloading rule — and the closing line with its two XX placeholders, so that the caveat above stops being true the day the city fills the dates in
Reykjavíkurborg — the agenda item actually put to the council: 'Göngugötur - niðurstöður starfshóps og tillaga að samþykkt', the working group's findings and the proposed samþykkt, attached to the borgarráð meeting of 25 August 2022 (fundur nr. 5673). The borgarráð minutes record it as a letter from the environment and planning department dated 18 August 2022, following that committee's approval of 17 August 2022, and it is the document borgarstjórn then approved on 6 September. Held as the independent second copy of the act text, and because it carries the same defect: its Article 10 closes 'Samþykkt á fundi skipulags- og samgönguráðs þann XX. júní 2022 og á fundi borgarráðs þann XX. júní 2022'. Two placeholder dates in two different months in the two texts the publisher serves. ⚠️ Measured in cycle 108: this 4.2 MB file yields 9,774 characters, and the act text is NOT among them — the pages carrying it decode as a shifted alphabet ('umhverfis- og skipulagssviðs' comes out as ') K X P K Y H U I L V'), each letter three places up. So what is watched here is the cover letter and the working group's remit — the date of the 17 August 2022 committee extract, the agenda item's own title, the remit line and the chair's name — and NOT the second copy of the act text this source is held for. The sweep calls the document `readable`; that is a verdict about the file, not about every page in it
Reykjavíkurborg — the city's page on vörulosun, loading and unloading. The source for the delivery window, for the rule that in a göngugata unloading is permitted only within the times shown on the sign at that street, and for the permission to unload without a motor vehicle outside the window
Stjórnarráðið / Dómsmálaráðuneytið — Reglugerðasafn on Ísland.is, reglugerð nr. 1240/2019 um sektir og önnur viðurlög vegna brota á umferðarlögum og reglum settum samkvæmt þeim. The penalty source. Its fine table is organised by article of umferðarlög nr. 77/2019 and the entry for Article 10, 'Göngugata (nýmæli í lögunum)', prices unauthorised motor traffic in a pedestrian street at 20,000 in the column headed 'Sektarfjárhæð kr.', with careless driving and careless cycling in one at the same figure. Article 5 of the regulation sets the 25% discount for payment within 30 days. The Reglugerðasafn describes itself as the complete collection of regulations in force, which is what makes an entry in it a currency statement as well as a text
Stjórnarráðið — Reglugerðasafn on Ísland.is, reglugerð nr. 250/2024 um umferðarmerki og notkun þeirra, the national traffic-sign regulation. The source for how a driver meets this scheme on the ground: the pedestrian-street sign marks entry to an area where the traffic act's göngugata provisions apply, further rules for the area may be written on the sign itself, the sign must be erected at every entrance to a pedestrian street and its counterpart wherever traffic leaves one, and the sign is to be used only for a street or area whose surroundings and design are made for people on foot, where driving motor vehicles is prohibited
Reykjavíkurborg — news of 4 November 2025, 'Austurstræti opnað formlega sem göngugata'. The currency proof for this record and the source for its newest street: Austurstræti from Pósthússtræti to Ingólfstorg was formally opened as a pedestrian street the previous day, producing a continuous pedestrian area from Lækjartorg to Ingólfstorg, in line with the Kvosin traffic plan approved in 2020. It also states the delivery hours, the exemption for holders of a disabled parking card, and unrestricted access for police, ambulance and fire service. An authority does not extend a scheme it has abandoned
Next scheduled re-check: 2027-03-23.