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Bus and taxi traffic has resumed on Rideau Street after either a pothole or a sinkhole sprang open on the thoroughfare Thursday afternoon.

The new hole appeared Thursday in the same area where a massive sinkhole formed in June 2016 and shut down Rideau Street for months.

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This much smaller hole, a few metres wide, prompted OC Transpo to warn riders there will be system-wide delays on several routes after Rideau Street was closed from Sussex Drive to Dalhousie Street to accommodate emergency repairs.

However, the city maintains the hole was not in fact a sinkhole, but a pothole.

After crews exposed the concrete “duct bank” it appeared there was “some settlement of material under the concrete duct bank,” said Steve Cripps, the director of O-Train Construction at Transportation Services, in a statement that did not define “duct bank.”

“This left a small void under it which allowed material from above to shift slightly downward causing the pothole at the surface.”