Wagholi grows, but traffic crawls on narrow stretch

PUNE: The British had built the Pune-Ahmednagar road to meet the needs of their troops at the Khadki, Pune, Ahmednagar and Aurangabad cantonments in 1850. Nearly 170 years have passed since then and rapid urbanisation at Yerawada, Chandannagar, Vadgaonsheri, Vimannagar and Kharadi has led to heavy traffic movement on the road, triggering snarls on the stretch between Wagholi and Shirur that has not seen adequate widening.
One of the fastest developing suburbs on the outskirts of Pune, Wagholi is one of the main entry points to Pune. The rise in the number of residential and business complexes, educational institutes, information technology hubs, encroachments, industrial units at Ranjangaon, Shikrapur and Shirur and vehicles is only leading to traffic chaos in the area.

The Pune rural traffic police has held a series of meetings with the district collectorate, Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation of India, public works department, Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority, PMPML and the Wagholi gram panchayat to chalk out a strategy to better road infrastructure. But there has not been any change on the ground till date.

Traffic snarls have made life of approximately 1.5 lakh people living in over 200 housing societies of Wagholi and its adjoining rural belt miserable and there’s no signs of any an early solution.

Inspector Shahuraj Surve of Pune rural police traffic branch said a lane on both sides of the highway can be increased. “This will reduce traffic congestion by 40%. But for this, the Wagholi gram panchayat has to take a bold decision of evicting all encroachments. Vehicles remain stranded on road sides of the roads for hours in the absence of adequate parking space. The heavy industrial vehicles add to the mess during peak traffic hours between 8am and 11am and against from 4pm to 8pm.”

He added, “We cannot affix jammers on vehicles parked along the roads because it would create more congestion. We have requested the gram panchayat to provide us with a crane to tow the vehicles and increase timing of signals at Kesnand phata and Wagheshwar chowk, but in vain. We also wanted plugging of 31 punctures between Kharadi and Kesnand phata. But that too did not happen.”