The increased holiday traffic havoc in Ashburton on Good Friday was caused by generator failure.
The loss of power during maintenance works caused the barrier arms at the level crossing of the new Walnut Avenue intersection with State Highway 1 to go down and stay down for hours, leaving the east-west traffic stranded on a red light until power was restored.
KiwiRail’s South Island operations general manager, Mark Heissenbuttel, said it was the result of a generator failure that only impacted the newly-upgraded Walnut Avenue crossing.
Heissenbuttel said the lines feeding the level crossing at Walnut Ave were turned off as part of general maintenance conducted by the local power company at around 10.30am on Good Friday.
“KiwiRail were alerted in advance of the maintenance and the crossing was checked the day prior to the shutdown,” Heissenbuttel said.
“As soon as the power was turned off, a standby generator took over the barrier system.
“Unfortunately, the standby generator failed.”
As crossing alarm and barrier systems are designed to “fail safe” he said, the barrier arms came down, preventing vehicles from crossing the rail line.
“A technician arrived shortly after and manually raised the barrier arm, allowing traffic to flow,” he said.
The issue was resolved later that day when power was restored he said.
A Waka Kotahi spokesperson said that, as the rail level crossing and lights are synchronised, it resulted in the signals phasing to stay red for traffic crossing the rail line until the issue was resolved at 2.30pm.
Police attended the scene to assist with traffic control.
They also had to send out a message that traffic lights not working was not a 111 emergency call after receiving multiple reports through the emergency response line.

• By Jonathan Leask