A street festival planned for Skólavörðustígur begins today, and ends the day Laugavegur opens to car traffic again.
Skólavörðustígur will be closed to car traffic from Bergstaðastræti down to Bankastræti. The city website states that previous festivals have been met with enthusiasm by those businesses who took part. As this weekend also happens to include Gay Pride, downtown is expected to be quite vibrant over the next few days.
Laugavegur will also be closed during this time, even though it was supposed to be opened to car traffic again last Monday. City officials say that the closing was so successful, they decided to extend it until next Monday, August 8th.
The success of the street closing was demonstrated in the numbers themselves. As reported, the closing of Laugavegur has increased pedestrian traffic there from about 9,000 per day to 14,000 per day. This has also resulted in more people walking into the shops on that street.
Although the street-closing experiment comes to a close, merchants have overall expressed support for the move, and it is likely that closing Laugavegur will happen again next summer.
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