Mumbai-Pune expressway commuters’ woes continue on Sunday

The traffic police managed the situation by stopping traffic from Pune to Lonavala for 15 minutes every hour from 8 am to 4 pm

THANE/PUNE: On Saturday morning, a Thane-based doctor, Veena Kavalkar, received an emergency call to attend to an accident victim at the nearby Brahmand Hospital. Assuming she would reach in 10 minutes, she got into her car immediately. But the regular 10-minute route took her 55 minutes that day. “It was only because I kept instructing the nurses over the phone that my patient’s condition did not worsen,” she said.

Pune, India -December 23, 2023 : Due to weekend and Christmas holidays, there was a huge traffic jam on the expressway at Khandala Ghat on Saturday in Pune, India, on Saturday,December 23, 2023.(HT PHOTO)

The reason for the Thane jam was the huge volume of vehicles streaming towards the Mumbai-Pune expressway, packed with revellers out to celebrate the three-day Christmas weekend. With thousands of people from Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Thane making their way to Pune and the hill stations of Lonavala and Khandala via the expressway, a massive crush ensued. The backlog of traffic, which began at Borghat, rippled to Thane’s arterial roads affecting commuters badly. Mumbai city, however, was normal.

Kapil Gaur, another Thane resident, set out on his daily route from Ghodbunder Road towards Thane on Saturday evening. “We face traffic during peak hours so I left home at around 5 pm to avoid it,” he said. “But the roads were so packed that my 15-minute journey took 1 hour and 15 minutes.”

Those on the way to their vacations suffered equally. Several commuters claimed that it took them over seven hours to reach Lonavala on Friday and Saturday. The vehicles of some broke down, as their fuel tanks emptied out in the journey. Many commuters took to X (formerly Twitter) to express their anguish at the bad traffic management.

Shubhangi Mayekar, a resident of Vangni in Thane district, told HT that her plan was to visit a relative in Pune and then go ahead to Mahabaleshwar. “We were accompanied by small children,” she said. “We started our journey on Friday evening at around 5.30 pm but got stuck near Khopoli and later Lonavala, so much so that we scrapped our plan and stayed put in Pune. We reached Pune at almost 11.30 pm. It was a horrible day.”

The situation on the expressway did not improve even on Sunday despite the highway traffic police opening the two lanes of the Pune-Lonavala carriageway to Mumbai-Lonavala goers. However, it got considerably better for travellers going to Lonavala from Pune. While the vehicular movement on the expressway was slow, it was steady and there were no jams, said travellers and the traffic police.

“Today I travelled to Lonavala from Pune along with my family for Christmas celebrations,” said Samrat Jain a citizen from Kothrud. “There were lots of vehicles on the highway, but luckily we did not get stuck anywhere as the vehicles were moving forward.” Added Amit Shahane, a Pune resident who went to Alibag, “The vehicles were moving slowly but at no point did we have to halt. It took us around six hours to reach Alibag.”

Vinay Rathod, DCP of the Thane traffic police reiterated that the Thane situation had normalised by Sunday. “Everything was normal at Ghodbunder, the Thane-Nashik Road and towards the Eastern Express Highway,” he said. “We have deployed traffic police bandobast at every prominent junction to solve the traffic congestion.”

The Mumbai-Lonavala leg of the expressway, especially the ghats, however, continued to be bad. When contacted on Sunday, Dr Ravindra Singhal, additional director-general of police (highway traffic) said, “The traffic is very dense. Our staff is in the spot.”

Lata Phad, superintendent of the state highway police, said the situation was comparatively better on Sunday. “Yesterday, the traffic jam was worse, as there were long queues of vehicles on the e-way,” she said. “Today there is a rush of people but no jams as such. Vehicles are moving forward albeit slowly, and we have done effective monitoring of vehicles across the highway in our jurisdiction.”

The traffic police managed the situation by stopping traffic from Pune to Lonavala for 15 minutes every hour from 8 am to 4 pm. All the lanes of the expressway during this time were opened to Mumbai-Pune traffic to pass at different spots, depending on the density of the traffic.