After engineering student Ruchita Balwalli, 18, was killed by a speeding St Helena’s School bus on Nagras Road in Aundh on March 23, the issue of poor road infrastructure has once again come to the fore.
After engineering student Ruchita Balwalli, 18, was killed by a speeding St Helena’s School bus on Nagras Road in Aundh on March 23, the issue of poor road infrastructure has once again come to the fore.
As many as 217 two-wheeler riders lost their lives on roads in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad in 2010 alone.
The absence of a divider on Nagras Road made it possible for the speeding school bus to overtake a stationary vehicle opposite Domino’s pizza outlet and hit the unfortunate Ruchita’s two-wheeler head-on.
Ruchita’s bereaved father, Ashwin, a senior corporate executive in the city, wants to persuade the civic and police authorities to construct a divider on Nagras Road to prevent any more fatal accidents.
Speaking to DNA at his residence on Friday, Balwalli said he contacted the Save Pune Traffic Movement group, which promised to survey Nagras Road on April 10. Balwalli also planned to meet members of the West Aundh Welfare Association (Wawa) and the Aundh Vikas Mandal (AVM) for support in pursuing the divider plan on Nagras Road.
Bobby Gokhlay of Wawa agreed that Nagras Road had become dangerous in the absence of road dividers. According to Gokhlay, Wawa, which represents 35 housing societies on Nagras Road, had managed to persuade the Aundh ward office of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to install speed-breakers at three crucial spots at the beginning of the road.
Chandmal Parmar, road safety crusader and founder of Rajashree Parmar Memorial Trust — who lost his own daughter, Rajashree, in a two-wheeler accident on Shankarsheth Road in November 1989 — rued the fact that the road infrastructure continued to be poor in Pune.
Parmar told DNA, “Fifty-one accident-prone spots have been identified by the Pune traffic police, but the PMC, which is in charge of the road infrastructure, has not undertaken any measures to reduce the incidence of accidents.”
Parmar said that unless the traffic police got full control over the road infrastructure in the city, there was little hope of any improvement taking place.
Girish Deshpande, member of AVM, said four of the five development plan (DP) roads in Aundh were deficient. He rued the fact that it had taken the AVM two years of follow-up at the highest level in the PMC to get the road divider project off the ground on ITI Road near Sarjaa restaurant.
Deshpande also pointed out that the inability of the PMC to acquire land from a builder on the DP Road connecting Sarjaa restaurant to Punjab National Bank had resulted in half the road not being asphalted, increasing the chances of accidents.
Likewise, Deshpande said the PMC had not acquired the plot opposite Anandban Club despite a court order, thereby hampering adequate road-widening on the road from Seasons Hotel to DAV School.
(With inputs from Sandip Dighe)
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