Rijkswaterstaat outage disrupts Dutch bridges, locks and motorway signs after fibre cable work, fully resolved by evening
A nationwide IT failure at Dutch infrastructure agency Rijkswaterstaat on Saturday temporarily disabled central control of bridges, locks, tunnels and digital highway signs. The outage was triggered by planned fibre optic cable maintenance and fully cleared by 20:30.
The outage began during scheduled work on a glass fibre cable, knocking out internet access for Rijkswaterstaat’s control centres. Central management of movable bridges, navigation locks and tunnels was lost, and the agency could not activate red crosses, lane closures or speed limits on the matrix signs above motorways. Traffic control rooms also lost many highway camera feeds, slowing their ability to detect stranded vehicles.
Impact on road and waterway traffic
Where possible, bridges and locks were switched to local manual operation, but the agency warned of delays and temporary closures. Many bridges were already closed because of the heat, which had triggered precautionary measures earlier in the day. The matrix signs remained unusable for several hours, raising safety concerns on the road network. Several Rijkswaterstaat websites and the national information hotline were also unreachable or could not be updated during the disruption.
All systems are working again.
Weather warnings layered on top of the outage
The Dutch meteorological institute KNMI issued a code yellow warning for heavy thunderstorms on Saturday evening, upgrading to code orange from 20:00 in the provinces of Limburg, North Brabant, Gelderland and Overijssel. Rijkswaterstaat urged recreational boaters to return to port early, warning that bridges and locks might not open quickly or at all.
If you are out boating now, certain bridges or locks may be working more slowly or not at all. Since a thunderstorm is coming, make sure you turn back early enough to get home.
Recovery timeline
Around 17:15, Rijkswaterstaat announced that the internet connection had been restored and the first systems were coming back online. By 18:00, initial systems could be restarted, and the agency described the progress as encouraging while checking step by step that everything functioned correctly. The outage was fully over by about 20:30. The spokesperson confirmed that no major traffic or waterway incidents were caused by the disruption.
The outage did not lead to major disturbances in traffic or on the water.
