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After landslides, Pune-Mumbai Expressway opens for vehicular movement
Vehicular traffic on Pune-Mumbai Expressway restored after 5-hour closure due to two landslide incidents. Long queues and delays reported.
Vehicular traffic on the Pune-Mumbai Expressway was restored after more than five hours on Monday after two landslide incidents were reported on Mumbai-bound lanes.
The first incident was reported near Adoshi village on Sunday evening as a result of which the road was shut between 10:30 pm and 3:00 am. At around 3:30 am another landslide incident was reported near Khandala.
Long queues of around five kilometres were witnessed near Lonavla due to the closure of the road.
Considering this series of incidents, several teams of state highway police, Ideal Road Builder (IRB), and Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) decided to remove all loose boulders and debris.
As a part of the exercise, Mumbai-bound lanes of the expressway were initially completely shut for traffic between noon to 2 pm. However, around 5:30 pm mud, debris, and loose boulders were cleared and traffic movement resumed.
Tanaji Chikhale, superintendent of police (Raigad), highway police, said, “We resumed two lanes at around 3:30 pm but after clearing all mud, boulders we have resumed traffic movement on all lanes by 5:30 pm.”
According to Chikhale, the entire work to remove loose boulders has been completed while work to install steel nets to prevent any more landslides is underway in the ghat section.
“To complete net installation, it will take two to three more days. For this, one Mumbai-bound lane will be kept close but it won’t affect the traffic movement,” said Chikhale adding, no more closure will be required for this week.
Due to the mega block, those who travelled on Pune-Mumbai Expressway on Monday faced a tough time as all lanes towards the Mumbai expressway were closed while the old Mumbai-Pune highway also witnessed a heavy rush of vehicles due to the first working day of the week.
Ganesh Pangharkar, a commuter heading to Mumbai from Pune was among those stranded in traffic. “It took almost seven hours to reach Mumbai even after leaving early. You don’t even get food and water during such long traffic jams on the expressway,” said Pangharkar.
Commuters expressed their disappointment over various social media sites too.
One of the commuters tweeted, “Pune-Mumbai Expressway has been jammed and our children are starving. Request traffic police to look into this or at least make providing U-Turn.” (sic)
Another Twitter user Nadeem Hussain was also stuck in this traffic jam. He said in his tweet, “@traffic_pune please help. Stuck on Pune highway going towards Mumbai expressway. For 2 hours. Please help to clear this indefinite jam.” (sic)
