'Golden hours' to ease traffic on Mumbai-Pune Expressway

To ease the movement of traffic on the busy Mumbai-Pune Expressway, Maharashtra Traffic police have introduced the concept of 'golden hours', under which multi-axle vehicles and containers will be barred from plying for a few hours on specific days. This exercise will primarily benefit passenger and small vehicles. "The time sharing concept known as 'golden hours' has been launched on an experimental basis. Under this, the stretch between Khalapur and Urse toll plaza on the Expressway will be closed for around fours hours for three-axle and multi-axle vehicles over the weekends," Additional Director General (Traffic) of Maharashtra, RK Padmanabhan, said in Mumbai on Wednesday.

Under this initiative, Pune-bound vehicles will be stopped between 5 PM and 8 PM on Fridays and between 8 AM and noon on Sundays. Similarly, vehicles coming towards Mumbai will be halted between 4 PM and 8 PM on Sundays and 6 AM to 9 AM on Mondays, he said.

Due to the increase in number of vehicles, the Expressway has been witnessing a rise in traffic jams as well as fatal accidents and this exercise is aimed at easing out the traffic. According to Padmanabhan, although they have started implementing the exercise since the last two weeks, it will be enforced in a full fledged way from this week. He said that the Traffic department staff will on the move in a vehicle on the Expressway to keep an eye on the vehicular movement and to see if anybody is violating the rules.

"If they find any traffic violation, they will provide details of the offending vehicles to the nearest check-post, which will then take action," Padmanabhan explained. Six high-ranked officers and 60 constables are part of this exercise, the official said.