Pune’s governing body gets dedicated bicycle department

The department’s jobs include planning the bicycle tracks, parking bays and also overseeing the co-ordination among various departments as well as to look into the funding from the Central government.

The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), after seeing the enthusiastic response from the citizens of Pune for ‘share a bicycle’ plan, has opened a special bicycle department to execute, plan and coordinate between the four bicycle providers for the city. This department was opened up on 5 March 2018.

Narendra Salunkhe, superintendent engineer and project officer says department’s major role is to create awareness about the bicycle plan and also to bring back cycling days. (Pratham Gokhale/HT Photo)

“Pune is a city known for bicycles, and with the increasing traffic, people left their bicycles at home out of concern for its safety, but this is all slowly changing. This department’s major role is to create awareness about the bicycle plan and also to bring back cycling days,” said superintendent engineer and project officer Narendra Salunkhe, who is an avid cyclist, who rides atleast 40 kms daily as part of his exercise regime, from 5 am to 7am.

The department’s jobs include planning bicycle tracks, parking bays and also overseeing the coordination with various departments, as well as to look at the funding from Central government. Till date the department has received ₹70 crores as funding for this ‘share a bicycle’ plan.

“We have four vendors, ZoomCar PEDL, ofo, Yulu, Mobike with whom PMC has signed memorandum of understanding. We monitor the working of these vendors. We also listen to the user grievances and also try to help them,” said Salunkhe.