Pune: A long-awaited widening and other developments of the Pashan-Sutarwadi road is set to gather pace with PMC allocating Rs9 crore for the project.The municipal commissioner announced the allocation at a recently concluded general body meeting. Officials from Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC)’s road department conducted a site visit on Saturday.The work would be expected to start by Nov, said corporator Rohini Chimte, who also chairs Aundh-Baner ward.Sameer Uttarkar, a Pashan resident, said the road was in urgent need of repair as it has been used by heavy vehicles moving towards the service road of the Pune-Bengaluru highway, public buses plying to and from Sutarwadi bus depot, and personal vehicles.“During peak hours, from 8.30am to 10.30am and from 5.30pm to 7.30pm, it has remained choked. Potholes and bottlenecks, where it joined the service road, were an everyday sight on this road. These issues result in heavy traffic jams. There was a need to make the road wider and better surfaced,” said Uttarkar.Ramesh Waghmare, executive engineer of PMC, said the existing road, which passes near the Pashan-Sutarwadi crematorium, was 9 metres wide, but narrow in some places. “The road develops potholes easily because of the soil conditions. Hence, we have decided to concrete it in the first phase to make it durable. We conducted a site visit and finalised the plans. Now, approvals and other formalities have been pending,” said Waghmare said on Saturday.Waghmare said that while the road was shown to be 24m in the development plan, it would take time to acquire land on various stretches. “In the first phase, the road would remain 9m wide throughout. In the second phase, we would widen the road to 24m, but the service road width would remain unchanged at 7.5m. We would develop existing roads till the land acquisition would not be completed to streamline traffic,” said Waghmare.Chimte said discussions were on with landowners about land acquisition, and she expected the problems of acquisition would be resolved by the time road work started.
