NAVI MUMBAI: The traffic movement on the Pune-bound carriageway of the
Mumbai-Pune Expressway
worsened from Saturday 10pm to Sunday evening.
The traffic stretched up to 12km on the ghat section between Dheku village and a few metres after the Khandala tunnel.
The light vehicle travel time on the 15km-long ghat section has increased by over three times due to the Christmas weekend. The 13-35 minutes travel time has gone up to 45 minutes to 1 hour, said the highway safety patrol. The working class hit the expressway on Sunday. To clear the Pune-bound light vehicles, the highway traffic police had to shut the Mumbai-bound carriageway nine times intermittently between Sunday morning and evening. These block times ranged for 11-25 minutes.
A Mumbai resident,
Dr Shridhar Suryavanshi
, who got stuck in traffic between the Khalapur toll plaza and the ghat section on Sunday evening while travelling to Pune, said, "I travelled only 3km in over an hour and-a-half (from 5.40pm to 7.15pm)."
Highway traffic police-Borghat unit assistant inspector
Yogesh Bhosale
said, "More blocks were taken to clear the traffic as more light vehicles turned up surpassing the Saturday numbers."
Traffic police sub inspector
Mahesh Chavhan
said, "The block time closure length of Mumbai-bound carriageway was increased to 12km on Sunday as against 6km on Saturday." Highway traffic police-Khandala unit assistant inspector Niranjan Ranaware said, "Many stopped cars were towed away in the ghat section."
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