I visited the city recently and I was surprised at the level of car dependency. Taxes to buy cars are extremely expensive, cars themselves are expensive, and gas prices are very high, parking and parking fines are expensive, but there’s no reliable option for transport in the city.

I’m excited to know what he would recommend and how he’s advising the city.

Can you imagine publicly owned street cars run by publicly owned electricity would improve quality of life and transporation in the city?


15 comments

  3. Electric cars have been tax-free for many years.

    Bicycles, however, are heavily taxed.

  6. That is the utopia I imagine to live in one day. No one needs to own a car, they are standing around 23h a day in average. It would solve a lot of parking issues, too. I am using Hopp cars quite often if I just need to go somewhere quick, otherwise I use electric scooters. Was thinking of buying one, but that does not really add up for the time I would be using it, also thinking about maintenance costs. I still own a normal car though, but my partner also needs to use it to get to work. Instead of buying a second one we go this way and get away much cheaper with it.

  7. One can only dream… it’s one of my least favorite thing about Iceland, the car dependency and how many people don’t really want to invest in better public transport system.

  8. this is a common mistake. Some people come to Reykjavik and are horrified (it happened to me too, still does). Where they go wrong is in thinking this is supposed to be a city for humans. It is not. It’s a city build exclusively for and around cars. Cars live in this city. Cars have rights. Humans do not. Humans are only an unfortunate necessity as chauffeurs for the cars. Human lives don’t matter.

    You see it for example in the way we have literal 6-8 lane 60km/h highways going through neighborhoods destroying any possibility of social life or human movement. Any actual living human being would consider this a crime that would get the perpetrator punished and thrown out of office – and of course any intelligent being would have the mess cleaned up and return the city to a functional state. Not here though. Cars have priority. They own the city. If there is a problem (like, how some of the smaller humans have not yet grown into their car so they are forced to use their still-functioning legs) then we’ll simply build a bridge or a tunnel that they can walk a few kilometers to cross. That way they don’t inconvenience the cars – their overlords (god forbid we made the cars go out of their way or… gasp: slow down).

  9. It takes me less than 10 minutes to drive to work, there are plenty of parking spaces there.

    It takes me about 30 minutes to walk to work.

    It takes 40 minutes to take the bus to work.

    It would take me somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes to cycle to work, and I don’t have a clue where I’d keep the bike while at work.

    Given the above, why should I used any other transportation option than the car?

  11. I don’t take the car in reykjavik but the transportation offer has to significantly improve to make the capital area less car oriented. If you live far away from line 1. It’s hell. (For the people living outside of Reykjavik or the greater reykjavik). I’m lucky to live and work next to that line, it beats having a car during rush hour.

  12. One of his projects will take place within the neighbourhood that we live within, and will be exciting to see what happens.

    However to the car dependency comments, couldn’t be more true! Within my neighbourhood, it’s fairly easy to get from point A, all the way downtown and other retail areas within 20 minutes. Yet, once you go further a field the changes you need to make, in order to get to your final stop is incredibly time consuming!

  13. I imagine he will advise similar things like people who live here have been for decades but have gotten treated like uneducated morons who just “don’t understand” the complications of running a bus network. Aka, improve the quality of public transit to encourage it’s use, don’t just make it more annoying to drive cars to force us to use busses.

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