Motorway traffic was reduced to a crawl in Auckland's north on Tuesday morning after a mechanical fault delayed the opening of an additional southbound lane on the Harbour Bridge, leading to a backlog of cars along State Highway 1.
The bridge's eight lanes - four northbound, four southbound - are reconfigured overnight, with a moveable barrier creating a fifth southbound lane in time for rush-hour morning traffic into Auckland's CBD and central suburbs.
But a fault with the barrier machine shortly after 6am brought traffic to a standstill, with citybound vehicles bumper-to-bumper as far back as the Northcote Road off-ramp by 6:30am as they waited to cross the bridge - the primary gateway between Auckland's CBD and northern suburbs.
"Due to a barrier machine fault, the Harbour Bridge remains in a four-by-four lane layout currently, but is expected to be opened to the usual five-by-three lane configuration shortly," the Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) said in a tweet shortly after 6am.
"Allow extra time for citybound journeys from the North Shore this morning."
In an update at 6:45am, the NZTA confirmed the barrier machine had completed its adjustment of the bridge's lane configuration, with five southbound lanes available for citybound traffic.
A spokesperson for the agency told Newshub the machine fault was "minor" and quickly fixed.
"The barrier machine changed the layout of the bridge lanes about 45 minutes later than usual," she said.
It was a chaotic morning all around Auckland on Tuesday, with crashes on the Newmarket Viaduct and on the Northwestern and Upper Harbour Motorways causing significant delays and congestion along State Highways 1, 16 and 18.
Meanwhile, a breakdown at 8:40am on State Highway 16 - the Northwestern Motorway - blocked the right southbound lane, delaying commuters until the vehicle was cleared.
