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10 worst roads in Pune: Rains create huge craters, so how bad is the road on your route?
Four days of heavy rain expose the city’s roads for not being monsoon-ready. As citizens struggle the question now is, what’s the civic road department doing? HT is looking for pictures of the worst roads in the city. Mail us @ puneletters@htlive.com and we will feature the best of the worst
Traffic congestion in the city has worsened further this monsoon, with a number of roads being riddled with potholes and craters exposing poor quality work by the road department of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC).
Traffic in many parts of the city has been reduced to a crawl, in parts of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad due to craters and potholes.
Citizens and commuters passing through localities and roads in Wanowrie, Aundh flyover, District Court to Kamgar Putala, Satara Road, Katraj Dairy road, Sadashiv Peth, Wakad and Sus Road leading towards Lavale have been hit hard due to the numerous potholes and craters on these roads.
“I drove from Wakad to the Pune railway station and was wondering about people travelling daily through these potholes without hurting their backs,” said Sonia Kulkarni who was visiting from Mumbai. It took her much longer than the usual time to reach her destination as two wheelers tried to navigate through the water filled potholes on the Wakad road.
The road from the District Court to Kamgar Putla has been witnessing bumper-to-bumper traffic over the past week with potholes slowing down the vehicles.
Similarly the Juna Bazaar road and Ghole Road had slow-moving traffic with small, hazardous potholes taking two wheelers drivers by surprise.
The situation was not different in areas like Gera Junction in Lulla Nagar where there is massive crater-like pothole right at the turning of Lulla Nagar signal. “Lulla Nagar at Gera Junction is a chronic spot for potholes every year. The road is reduced to a terrible condition with the first rains itself. The PMC doesn’t seem to care about the citizens at all. These potholes lead to extremely slow moving traffic and long queues of vehicles and also waste of fuel,” said Vaidehi Suryavanshi, a commuter.
The flyover towards Aundh-Baner also sported new potholes after a day’s rain. The entire stretch was on a standstill and vehicles were literally in a queue till E-Square signal. “It’s a sorry state of affairs, you see so many people concentrating on this Smart City 500 metre stretch and have turned a blind eye to the other roads. The stretch outside Chatursinghi temple is horrible. There is a pothole even in the Police Colony road and my daughter almost met with an accident,” said Pradeep Sathye, a resident of Aundh.
PMC Explanations:
Pune Municipal Corporation’s (PMC) head of Roads Department, Rajendra Raut said that in the current financial year (2017-18), the civic body had allotted Rs 200 crore on the road project (concretisation and bitumen) in the entire city with an additional of Rs 100 crore for hot mix and maintenance for the roads.
“The reason for some of these roads to have potholes is because of cross-cut or patchwork done in these areas on the road which are not concretised. Homogeneity is not achieved during the patchwork thus leading to potholes which we are covering using cold emulsion,” Raut said.
“We have continuous teams of deputies and engineers on the site attending to the problems such as water logging, loose footpath and loose pavement blocks. It is mandatory for our staff to be on mobile maintenance vehicles in all the seven zones.
