Mumbai Pune Expressway – trip

9 years after India's first access controlled expressway was opened -----


Amrutanjan Point – it’s a British era viaduct/bridge which was used as a train reversing station. It’s a stone masonry structure and is the BIGGEST bottleneck on the expressway. From the Pune side, that the highest point on the E-way that you ascend to – and you begin your descent down the ghat once you cross this. The traffic moves here at 10 KMPH, with the heavy container trucks blocking almost all lanes. Its very common to find an overturned truck, or a truck with overturned goods – adding further to the traffic jam. Late night and early morning (around 4-5 AM) seem to be the WORST time to travel from Mumbai to Pune – the moment you cross the rest area prior to the ascent (when coming from Mumbai) – you get stuck in endless slow moving overloaded truck traffic, and you have to zig-zag through lanes after every 100 metres.



Made a trip on the expressway again last week, Mumbai bound 1 lane is closed in the ghat section, and an alternative Mumbai bound lane is provided in the Pune bound lanes, thus reducing the Pune bound lanes to 2!! The traffic from the rest area till you reach Lonavala is a mess – its takes you 1 hour in this section.. such is the volume of traffic on the e-way that the day is not far way when a Pune-Mumbai journey will take 5-6 hours to complete, the time it took before the e-way was constructed!!



There is a crane operator mafia that works as follows

Heavily trucks – the 22 wheel kind – make slow progress till they reach the Amrutanjan point. Just as you cross it, you start on a small gradient towards the Khandala tunnel – the traffic cops then stop the trucks just as you start on the gradient – and once the truck stops, it cannot start, and move thru the 1st, 2nd gears since you are already on the upward gradient. Heres when the crane / tow operators move in, and for a good fee, provide the initial momentum to the trucks so that they can overcome the gradient.