The Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) will take steps for safety of vehicle-users as per the recommendations of IIT Bombay, before starting the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) on the Pune-Mumbai highway. The civic body had commissioned the Rs 16-lakh study.
The IIT team has submitted a safety audit report to the civic body. As the first step, it has exchanged the merge-in at Morwadi and merge-out in Chinchwad to reduce traffic congestion at Mahavir Chowk in Chinchwad.
The engineering department said that the IIT team submitted its safety audit report to the civic body last week. Discussions on the report will be held with the civic office bearers and committee heads this week after which the report will be made public. They did not divulge any details of the findings or suggestions in the report.
The civic body widened the 12-km stretch of the Pune-Mumbai highway from Bhakti Shakti chowk, Nigdi to Harris bridge in Dapodi to 61 m under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). It has created four concrete lanes in the middle of the highway for speedy and non-stop traffic from Bhakti Shakti Chowk to Phugewadi.
The civic body has provided more than a dozen merge-in and merge-out points on the concrete lanes on both sides of the highway wherein the vehicles from the service road can enter them and those from the concrete lanes can exit to join the service road.
Earlier, there was a mergein near Garware Wall Ropes in Morwadi on the concrete lanes a little ahead of Ahilyabai Holkar Chowk, Pimpri to Akurdi and a merge-out near Big Bazaar around 200 m from Mahavir Chowk.
However, the area is always crowded as it has several institutions, big housing societies, malls and government offices, a Big Bazaar outlet, Empire Estate with 1,000 flats, deputy commissioner of police (zone III) office, a multiplex and other commercial establishments.
People coming to these establishments often travel on the wrong side of the road rather than use the exit to take a short cut to their destinations.
Last week, the engineering department of the civic body made changes to benefit the local residents. But people coming from outside Pimpri Chinchwad who are unaware of these changes face hardships.
Executive engineer in the PCMC, said that the merge-in and merge-out near Morwadi and Big Bazaar have been interchanged for the benefit of the local residents and to reduce traffic congestion at Mahavir Chowk in Chinchwad.
