Pune: Traffic slowed to a crawl during peak hours on the Pune-Mumbai expressway on Friday, with congestion affecting Pune-bound traffic. Officials attributed the snarls to weekend rush, as well as people travelling to vote in Saturday’s zilla parishad and panchayat samiti elections.According to commuters affected, vehicular movement had ground to a halt for a while in the ghat section near Lonavla in the evening. One commuter said, “I was returning from Mumbai in the evening, around 7 pm, and was stuck in a long traffic jam near Amrutanjan bridge.”The commuter said such congestion was becoming a regular feature on the expressway and said, “The authorities should speed up work on the new bridge so people don’t have to face these delays regularly.”There was congestion earlier in the day too. Farooque Shaikh, who was travelling with his family towards Mumbai, was caught in a traffic jam around 11am. “For 20-25 minutes, traffic was halted near the ghat section — no vehicle was moving.” For a brief while, he and his family were worried that it would be a repeat of the hours-long traffic jam earlier this week. “Fortunately, the road cleared in some time and vehicles started moving again.” A senior highway police officer said they were taking additional measures to maintain control following Tuesday’s incident, in which a gas tanker overturned near Adoshi tunnel.Rahul Patil, a lawyer from Pune who left Mumbai at 5pm, was caught in the traffic jam in the ghat section around 7pm. It took him more than an hour to cover the 11km ghat section. A senior highway police official told TOI that there were no accidents or other untoward incidents, attributing the congestion to an increase in weekend traffic. “We usually witness heavy traffic on Fridays and Saturdays. In such situations, traffic blocks are implemented by temporarily halting vehicles, particularly those heading towards Mumbai, to allow Pune-bound traffic to clear, as the volume on this corridor is high during the weekend,” the official said.The 10-15-minute-long block is a routine traffic management measure during the weekends. “This weekend, vehicular volume was higher as people must be travelling to cast votes in the ZP and panchayat samiti elections on Saturday,” the official added.
