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Mayor Don Iveson was “disappointed” after yet another failure on the Metro Line LRT snarled traffic and stranded waiting passengers on Tuesday morning.

A spokesperson with the city’s transportation infrastructure department said the system’s zone controller lost contact with trains on the track around 7 a.m. This caused the system to lock down, freezing cars on the line and bringing crossing gate arms down across intersections.

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“The Metro Line experienced a communications error … that resulted in the safety system being activated,” said Adam Laughlin, deputy city manager of the City of Edmonton’s integrated infrastructure services department.

“The safety controls performed as they were designed to in this type of situation, which resulted in some inconvenience to Metro Line users and traffic at affected intersections.”

The mayor applauded city officials who did “spring into action” to deal with the situation. Epcor crews were dispatched to manually override the system and buses were sent within 15 minutes to pick up stranded riders waiting for the train at the NAIT, Royal Alexandra Hospital and MacEwan stations.