Pune Ring Road update

With the proposed ring road plan hitting a roadblock, District Guardian Minister Ajit Pawar has stepped forward to resolve the issues so that the project gets the go ahead. "The heavy vehicle traffic entering the city is increasing day-by-day leading to congestion on city roads. The minister directed us to change the plan and come up with a new proposal since the earlier plan is not being implemented," said A V Devdhar, superintendent engineer, Public Works Department (PWD). He said there were difficulties in acquiring land for constructing roads due to opposition from the residents. "A possibility is being explored to construct elevated roads wherever possible," Devdhar said, adding that part of Pune-Nagar Road will be elevated at Wagholi while the road connecting Hadapsar with Saswad and Jejuri would have four lanes.
There would be a need to acquire land for construction of the road to connect Pune-Nagar Road with Pune-Mumbai Road and the state Cabinet will take the decision on financial provision, he said. "All the issues related to ring road will be decided at the meeting with the Guardian Minister," Devdhar said. The proposal of roping in the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation and the Pune Municipal Corporation to finance the ring road has been opposed by the respective civic bodies. Meanwhile, the PWD has decided to undertake origin destination (OD) survey to find out the number of vehicles coming into and going out of the city.
PMC additional city engineer Vivek Kharwadkar said the civic body has been trying to impress upon the state government to construct the ring road as it would reduce the load on the city roads. Earlier, it was proposed to construct the road in four parts with total length of 170 km and estimated cost of Rs 8,439 crore.However, the issue of 40 km road connecting Solapur Road to the old Pune-Mumbai Highway near Talegaon and 36 km road connecting Katraj to Nagar Road near Lonikand will be resolved on priority basis.