Maharashtra has decided to take up the road tunnel project to tackle growing traffic congestion on the expressway — especially on the 21-km ghat section between its Khopoli exit towards Mumbai and the Khandala exit near Sinhagad Institute towards Pune. A traffic study indicates that by 2019, the expressway will see heavy congestion, especially on the 21-km stretch. The proposed 12-km tunnel would not only offer decongestion and safety — provided vehicles control their speed — but also reduce travel time by half an hour, thus speeding up Panvel-Pune connectivity by road to just an hour. The 95-km expressway starts from Panvel and ends near Kiwale on the fringes of Pune. Vehicles currently cover this stretch in an hour and a half, to two hours. “The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation has planned to carve out a 12-km tunnel in the Sahyadri mountain range between the Khopoli and Khandala ends, to facilitate another eight-lane straight road to Pune. The present zigzag six-lane stretch falls short of handling the huge traffic on the expressway as well as the National Highway 4 (NH4) as both the roads merge in this section, leading to congestion,” said a senior state official. “Once built, the new eightlane tunnel route will become a part of the expressway while the existing six-lane expressway track will be made a part of the old Mumbai-Pune National Highway 4; thus traffic would be bifurcated to achieve decongestion. Accidents mostly occur on this stretch as it also gets several traffic exits and entries from Lonavala, Khandala and Khopoli; it sees heavy movement of cross-traffic as well,” said a source. Estimated project cost: Between 2,500 crore and 3,000 crore .Tunnel construction would take a minimum of four to five years .Preliminary technical and environmental feasibility study has been done; detailed study’s underway. Project has been submitted to state environment committee for clearance .No extra toll for tunnel, but toll recovery period is likely to be extended by 10 years
1 comment:
Its true when you say that majority of the accidents occur on the ghat section but I would like to add my personal observation that the biggest culprits are the multi axle vehicles and the trucks that clog up all the three lanes and hold up the traffic for kilometers. If the government is planning the detour the bigger commercial vehicles should be banned from it as a clog up inside a 12 km long tunnel will be catastrophic. www.mumbaijamming.blogspot.com
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