‘Golden hours’ drive begins for smooth traffic on Mumbai-Pune Expressway
The Highway Traffic police have started “Golden hours” initiative to regulate smooth traffic movement on Mumbai-Pune expressway.
To ensure quick and smooth commute between Mumbai and Pune during peak hours on holidays, the Mumbai- Pune Expressway stretch between Khalapur toll plaza and Urse toll plaza will be closed for three- axle and multi-axle vehicles on Friday evening from 5 pm to 8 pm. On Saturday morning from 8 am to 12 noon, three-axle and multi-axle vehicles will not be allowed to commute from Mumbai to Pune and from Pune to Mumbai from 4 pm to 8 pm and on Monday morning from 6 am to 9 am.
“We want to bring in lane discipline and better facilities. The “Golden hours” project has been started on an experimental basis. Firstly, we will be addressing space sharing concept to maintain lane discipline. There are many suggestions for improvement in traffic. But implementation is the challenge. The space-sharing along with time-sharing exercise will be on an experimental basis and is subject to modification depending on exigencies.
People should also be responsible and they should try and schedule their travel accordingly.” said RK Padmanaban, Additional Director General of Police, Highway police.
“We have also launched a spotter team which will include two constables on the stretch from Pune- Khalapur, Khalapur- Khandala, Khandala-Urse, Urse- Khandala , Khandala- Khalapur and Khandala- Panvel. We have started this initiative since last fifteen days and the number of traffic jams have comparatively reduced,” added Padmanabhan.
The constables will be travelling in private vehicles, IRB vehicles and MSRTC buses and will keep a secret vigil on the offenders involved in lane-cutting, speed driving and rash driving. Two constables will be travelling along the expressway to keep a tab on the offenders. The vehicle registration number will be noted along with the location. The constable at the next plaza will be informed about the offenders violating the traffic law for lane cutting, speeding and rash driving through an SMS.