Traffic on Ring Road One, the road circling Iceland, has never been measured heavier than this past July, RÚV reports. This data comes from the Icelandic Road and Coastal Administration (IRCA). On average 108,000 vehicles traveled through the 16 IRCA counters along the road daily in July. In comparison, ten years ago 82,000 vehicles went through the same counters, which means that traffic on the Ring Road has increased around 30 percent since 2007. IRCA data shows that traffic is usually the heaviest in July.
The increase in traffic between years, however, is slowing. Traffic increased 7.3 percent in July 2017 as compared to July 2016. Although the amount of traffic is greater, the increase is smaller than between any two years going as far back as 2014. The region experiencing the greatest increase in traffic is North Iceland, at around 12 percent, whereas the smallest increase is in South Iceland, at around 3.8 percent. Indications are that traffic increased 9 percent overall between the years 2016 and 2017, which is a smaller increase than in the previous year.
When considering the data individually for each day of the week, IRCA numbers show the most traffic occurs on Fridays, when the increase in numbers is also greatest. The weekday with the least amount of traffic is Tuesday.
