Long holiday weekend sees heavy rush on highways

The Maharashtra Highway State Police (HSP) has also deployed additional manpower on the highways, especially at toll posts and ghat section

Highways saw long queues on Friday with residents taking advantage of the long weekend to hit the roads to travel to tourist spots around Pune. Heavy traffic was seen on the Pune-Mumbai expressway and old Pune-Mumbai highway, towards Satara on Bengaluru highway and especially at the ghat sections of Khandala and at Mahabaleshwar.

Heavy traffic was seen on the Pune-Mumbai expressway and old Pune-Mumbai highway, towards Satara on Bengaluru highway (HT PHOTO)

The Maharashtra Highway State Police (HSP) has also deployed additional manpower on the highways, especially at toll posts and ghat section to clear the holiday rush. Also “golden hour” traffic movement in which heavy vehicles and trucks are stopped near the toll post as per the requirement for 1 or 2 hours today.

“We have deployed bandobast on large scale on all highways in Pune division looking at the weekend rush of people entering and departing the city. We have instructed the toll naka operators to post extra staff for clearing vehicles as there are long queues of vehicles. For extra police force, we have got manpower from other highway regions to tourists spots like Mahabaleshwar and Lonavla,” said Sanjay Jadhav, superintendent of police, state highway police (HSP), Pune.

“Another major thing which we are focusing is on ghat sections at Khandala and Wai Ghat going towards Mahabaleshwar. If there is bottleneck in the ghat section then the entire traffic flow is disturbed. So, along with policemen we have also put in place cranes for emergency situations. Then we are using golden hours system on highways and not allowing heavy vehicles to pass through the ghat section. We are stopping them at toll nakas for 1 or 2 hours as per the requirement to clear the traffic.” Jadhav said.

Shantanu Maner, an IT professional, said, “Today I came to Lonavla along with my family for two days vacations. There was massive traffic on the expressway. We had to wait for 15 to 20 minutes at the toll naka as there were long queues.”

Heavy rush was also seen at all the major state transport bus stands — Swargate, Shivajinagar which is now shifted to Wakdewadi and Pune railway station ST stand. Additional buses were sent on all the routes across Maharashtra by Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC). Giving details of the Pune division MSRTC bus operations, Ramakanat Gaikwad MSRTC Pune divisional controller said, “From yesterday (Thursday), there is heavy ST bus movement from all the bus stands as people want to go home or for holiday during the long weekend. We are plying extra buses on all the major routes like Kolhapur, Satara, Sangli, Mumbai, Konkan, Nashik, Solapur and Aurangabad. Additional manpower of traffic controllers is given to guide passengers to get buses. Around 15 per cent of additional buses are given by the Pune division across the state.”