The Maharashtra government is planning to convert the Mumbai-Pune Expressway into eight lanes from the existing six lanes for better traffic management and to bring down accidents.
Announcing this in the assembly on Monday, deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis also said that the state would put a system in place where police could find out the exact location of the caller in case of an emergency.
“We will check the feasibility of making the Mumbai-Pune Expressway eight lanes and a request will be placed before chief minister Eknath Shinde in this regard. It is true that the traffic on the expressway will continue to increase; thus, the state government has taken the suggestion positively,” Fadnavis said, in response to the demand made by leader of opposition Ajit Pawar.
The death of former legislator and Maratha leader Vinayak Mete on August 14 has brought the issue of rising road accidents on the expressway to the fore.
The Bharatiya Janata Party leader referred to the fact that Mete’s driver failed to inform the police of the exact location of the accident, leading to a delay in moving the Maratha leader to a hospital.
Under the new system, Fadnavis said, once an emergency call was made to the police on 112, the caller’s location would be traced and they could be reached for help without any delay.
Fadnavis said Mete’s driver was trying to overtake when the accident occurred. He also announced an administrative probe by an additional director general rank officer to find out any negligence on the part of police. The state government has already ordered a CID inquiry into the accident which the police suspect could have been caused by reckless driving.
The 94.5-km expressway is one of the country’s busiest arterial corridors. It handles nearly 60,000 vehicles per day, a figure which has been increasing. In the four years since 2018, the expressway has reported around 337 accidents in which nearly 400 people lost their lives.
Fadnavis also informed the house about the Intelligent Traffic Management System, an artificial intelligence application, for which a work order has been issued by the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC). It will be connected to high-tech cameras, sensors, and other traffic violation detection systems installed on highways.
AV Shenoy, a transport expert, believes that the issue is more about enforcing discipline on the expressway. “The commuters don’t follow traffic rules, especially heavy vehicles which are involved in lane cutting and putting lives of others at risk. They need to be confined to the very left lane.”
He said that the ‘missing link’ project, a combination of tunnels and bridges, would also bring relief to the commuters as it would allow them to avoid traveling through Khandala Ghat.
The ‘missing link’ will connect Khopoli exit and up to Sinhgad Institute by turning the existing six lanes into eight lanes. The entire stretch of 13.3 km will be divided into two tunnels — one of 1.75 km and the other of 8.92 km — and two bridges (viaducts) of 790 metres and 650 metres respectively.
It is expected to be completed by April 2023, MSRDC officials said.
Sanjay Yadav, joint managing director, MSRDC, said they had conducted a study along with officials from the transport department and Save Life Foundation, an NGO, and identified the black spots on the expressway. “We have zeroed in on the black spots where maximum accidents occurred, and identified the timings of the mishaps and the types of vehicles involved.”
The causes had been divided broadly into four categories — human error, enforcement, emergency, and education, Yadav said.
Training for MLAs’ drivers
The transport department has planned to hold a training session for drivers of all the MLAs at YB Chavan Centre on Wednesday. Speaker Rahul Narvekar said that the drivers would be informed about the road safety rules and the precautions to be taken during emergencies.
