Regent Street to re-open 6 p.m. Weds 21st March

Regent Street will reopen at 6 p.m. today after it was closed on 2 March 2013 due to a 21 inch water main bursting. The burst main caused flooding across one of London's busiest shopping streets and also damaged the underside of the road itself. This required Westminster City council, Thames Water, TfL and many other utility providers to work together to reopen the road, which was achieved one day ahead of schedule. This will be welcome by businesses and travellers as the closure caused considerable disruption. Buses travelling to and fromPiccadilly were re-routed along Shaftesbury Avenue and Oxford Street, adding considerably to journey times on some routes such as the No 88.

Martin Low, Westminster City Council commissioner of transportation said: "This has been a monumental team effort by hundreds of workers engaged by the council, Thames Water, TfL and several utilities.

"Essentially this was London's biggest ever pothole, and we have worked round the clock to return Regent Street back to normality."

The council used the incident to undertake other works in the area, installing new pedestrian perch islands in the centre of Regent Street on the approaches to the damaged junction with Vigo Street andGlasshouse Street and completely rebuilt it. They  also resurfacedGlasshouse Street between Regent Street and Warwick Street and TfLto installed two new bus shelters in Regent Street."

The repairs to the water main took 96 hours, and  75 different excavations were undertaken to ensure that all valves, fire hydrants and water pipes were in the best condition possible, 34 gullies along Regent Street were cleaned and 120 square metres of tarmac was installed on the new pedestrian islands with over 200 metres of new granite kerb installed. Sixty iron manhole covers were lifted and reset with special paving material around them and over 1,500 tonnes of road materials were removed and laid. In total there were 500 different maintenance activities and over 4,500 man hours expended on the project. Over 28 pieces of heavy machinery and plant were required for the works.