City of York Council's Urban Traffic Control system has failed, due to a fault in the communications system provided by BT. Engineers are currently working on repairing the fault but the council believes that it could be some time before things are working normally.

The Urban Traffic Control system manages 42 traffic lights across the city, enabling the controlled flow of traffic, along key routes in the city centre. The system creates an additional 20 percent of traffic capacity by managing traffic flow. The system covers the city centre lights, which are working, but not as efficiently as they are designed to do using the traffic control system. The systems failure will have a knock-on effect throughout the city.

Peter Evely, head of highway regulation, said: "We became aware of the fault on Friday evening and BT engineers have been working on the problem throughout the weekend. However, until they can re-connect the communications system, we are unable to centrally control the traffic lights and therefore the flow of traffic around the city.

We are unable to estimate when the fault will be repaired and are entirely in the hands of the BT engineers. The fault caused congestion this morning and is likely to continue to do so throughout today, including this evening's rush hour. We are doing all that we can to relieve the problem, but inevitably there will be traffic congestion and we are urging people to plan for any journey by ensuring they allow extra time."

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