Presently, Pune is crisscrossed by Pune-Satara, Pune-Mumbai, Pune-Solapur, Pune-Nashik and Pune-Ahmednagar roads and the heavy traffic on these highways passing through city areas put major pressure on traffic resulting in major jams, accidents and result in pollution too. Considering this fact, a ring road is the need of the city.
Roads radiating from the city in all directions need to be widened to 4-6 lane. Besides, vehicles coming from one direction and proceeding to the other pass through Pune city, thereby creating traffic problems. If such passing traffic can be diverted through a road network outside the city limits, it will help solve the problems.
That’s how the idea of ring roads came forward. Proposed by former Maharashtra chief minister late Vilasrao Deshmukh in June 2007, the ring road project needs to be implemented before the entire vehicular traffic of the city comes to a halt.
The proposed circular ring road will go through both Pimpri-Chinchwad and Pune Municipal Corporation areas, especially on major traffic congested routes.
Earlier, the public works department of the state government had proposed the plan. Later, the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation Limited (MSRDCL) took over the proposal.
MSRDC is currently exploring the possibility of undertaking the construction of ring road around Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad Corporation limits through public private partnership (PPP) on design, build, finance, operate and transfer basis.
