Public works department plans widening of Ahmednagar Road to curb snarls

PUNE: The state Public Works Department (PWD) will add a lane on each side of the four-lane Pune-Ahmednagar highway in a bid to ease daily traffic congestion.
The PWD has planned to take up the road-widening work in a phased manner. In the first phase, work has been planned on a 26km stretch of the road, starting from Wagholi and continuing till Shikrapur.

According to many harried daily commuters — vexed with unending traffic jams during the peak hours every day — this is the most congested stretch on the road.
This stretch has increasingly witnessed traffic congestion on a daily basis for the last few years, due to an increase in daily travellers. The entire stretch from Wagholi to Shikrapur lacks facilities like a flyover or an underpass or alternative roads. This means the existing four-lane road is the only option for daily commuters to enter or exit the city.
As per official estimates, more than one lakh people travel daily on the Pune-Wagholi-Shikrapur-Ranjangaon-Ahmednagar stretch, in private as well as commercial vehicles and buses.
The PWD recently began the process of calling tenders. Based on the tenders, the PWD will appoint an agency to take up the work, pegged at Rs 173 crore.
Officials in the PWD, while confirming the development, said that the proposed six-laning work will not require any acquisition of land, as the widening will be done in the available space on both sides of the road. The bidders are expected to submit their proposals by December, following which the PWD will finish technical work in a month.
“We are planning to add a 3.5m wide lane on each side of the road, along with a 1m strip by the side. This basically means that the road width will increase by 4.5m on each side,” an official said.
Vijay Mane, who runs a car-rental business, said the Ahmednagar Road — which is the busiest after Satara Road — is plagued by poor road infrastructure. “The road has been widened only up to the end of PMC limits. The entire stretch from Wagholi to Shikrapur is in dire need of an upgrade. Vehicles take two hours every day in the evening to reach Pune,” Mane said.
Over the last two years, the district administration and the highway police had initiated various steps to eliminate traffic jams. The Pune Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (PMRDA) is also working on alternative routes to decentralize the traffic flow.
Ajay Rege, another commuter, said that illegal gaps in the road median also lead to a traffic slowdown. “There is an urgent need to develop separate lanes for local vehicles as well as for those that want to travel towards Shirur and Ahmednagar without any halt,” Rege said.
In May this year, TOI had reported that the district administration and the state government have planned flyovers for a hurdle-free journey on this stretch as a As a long-term solution.
Last year, the government had approved Rs 650 crore in this regard. Recently, the road was included under the Union government’s ‘Bharatmala’ project, underwhich Rs 1,260 crore will be spent on road improvement.