John Culatto
A SOFTWARE glitch caused the runway tunnel on Kingsway to close for about an hour around midnight on Wednesday, the Gibraltar Government said.
A safety measure closed the barriers blocking vehicles going towards Devil’s Tower Road at 11.32pm on Wednesday night, forcing police to reopen the runway crossing for about an hour.
Tunnel operators finally regained control of the system at 12:25am on early Thursday morning at reopened the tunnel.
Neither the northbound traffic heading to the frontier nor the pedestrian subway were affected.
As there were no flights at the time the Ministry of Defence allowed the Royal Gibraltar Police to redirect traffic back along the runway.
As soon as specialist technicians arrived on the scene, they were able to fix the problem.
It allowed police to once again block off the road crossing across the runway into Winston Churchill Avenue.
“Kingsway is under constant 24-hour surveillance by the Tunnel Control Room,” the government confirmed.
“Its staff are specifically trained to manage any issues that may arise.”
The incident is the first technical glitch that has occurred at the tunnel, which opened last week.
It gave drivers another glimpse of what it felt like driving across the runway after the Chief Minister thought he would be the last person to do this on March 30.
During the week, tunnel operators put the barriers down northbound toward Spain after frontier queues built up.
The government said this would be standard practice to stop cars getting stuck in the tunnel.
And on the Friday after it opened, police impounded the motorbikes of two young men who decided to have a race through the tunnel.
Police reported they had being doing speeds of around 100km/h when detected.
READ MORE:
- WATCH: Traffic starts to flow through Gibraltar’s new runway tunnel route to the frontier, named Kingsway
- TUNNEL OPENING: Gibraltar Chief Minister unveils new frontier access after successful emergency trial run
- HOW WILL THE TUNNEL WORK? Gibraltar police explain the whole process before it opens Friday
