GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Digging can be seen at Monroe and Coldbrook in the city's northeast side in front of the decommissioned water pumping station, where the city's primary circuit that serves traffic signals, streetlights, and facilities across the city was struck.
Many people are wondering what caused a massive traffic light outage Wednesday in Grand Rapids. The city said contractors digging at the intersection that will become a roundabout struck a gas line, causing a leak of natural gas.
"The project stopped at that point. They brought in the utility company to do the repair, and in the course of doing the repair, they clipped the city's primary circuit, which the primary circuit serves all the traffic signals in the city, the streetlights and a number of facilities," said James Hurt, Managing Director for the Public Services Group of Grand Rapids.
He says 140 traffic lights across Grand Rapids and surrounding areas were effected.
"All the circuits that service those areas were shut down, and needed to be repaired. So it's a process to bring that back on line," said Hurt.
It took a number of hours for the traffic lights to be restored, as 13 ON YOUR SIDE was told crews had to manually inspect the circuits at every intersection where there was an outage. One accident occurred where a car did not stop, resulting in minor injuries.
"The police department obviously was trying to help manage some of the traffic, the fire department was involved, you also have the Mobile GR department, the engineering department is being on scene with the construction project, so there was a really interdepartmental effort to try to bring the traffic signals back on line," Hurt said.
Hurt also wanted to emphasize the city's appreciation for patience and cooperation when navigating the outage.
"We want to give thanks to our citizens and the motoring public for recognizing the traffic signals that were out and abiding by the four way stop," he said.
He also explained the city is continuing to investigate the incident in order to find ways of preventing something like this from occurring again.
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