73 potholes expose PMC's tall claims

For the past four months, Nirupama Bhave of Prabhat Road Lane 4 has been praying for her life whenever she steps out of her house. Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has failed to fill a pothole at the Law College Road T-junction of Kanchan Lane opposite Krishna Dining Hall despite her numerous complaints.

“I have to watch out when I bicycle every day as the pothole is on the slope and the Law College Road witnesses heavy traffic,” she said, adding that the civic administration has said that the pothole cannot be filled as the telephone department’s project of laying cables is yet to be completed.

“PMC is waiting for a pothole accident to take place,” she said.
Many potholes have developed on the city roads due to intermittent rains. PMC’s claim of quickly repairing potholes even during rains, using the cold mix, fell flat when its helpline received over 73 complaints. Civic authorities admitted its inability to fill potholes immediately because of dampness. PMC received about 49 complaints in the past four days.

Additional city engineer (roads) Pramod Nirbhavane said, “We can only start filling potholes once it stops raining. The cold mix machine cannot work during the downpour.”

PMC and traffic police are also going lax on non-functional traffic signals that have been causing snarls for the past two days. On Wednesday, as many as 15 traffic signals were non-functional leaving the traffic out of gear at Kothrud, Pune station, Vishwa Maruti Chowk, Solapur Bazar, Singhad Road and Swargate areas during peak hours.

PCMC to take up anti-encroachment drive to ease up traffic flow in city

Officers from Pune traffic branch insisted that the encroachments on the city roads be removed to ease the flow of traffic, at a joint meeting of traffic police and Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) officials convened by additional chief secretary (home) Amitabh Rajan on Wednesday. The meeting took place at Pune police commissioner office.

The traffic police officers urged the PMC to take a strict action against the hawkers who have illegally encroached the footpath and register police complaint against these hawkers.
Deputy commissioner (traffic police) Vishwas Phandare said,

“The PMC has identified 45 spots where they will carry out anti-encroachment drive in the city. We have also asked them to introduce pay and park system at Tilak road, JM road, FC road and Karve road. Pay and park system will reduce the number of vehicles parked on the road and will eventually curb congestion.”

He said, “We have also asked PMC to relocate the state transport bus stops from Swargate and Shivajinagar. And, asked them to repair 31 non-functional traffic signals in the city. We have also requested them to start the tender process for intelligent traffic system.”

Apart from this pending issues regarding flyover at Ghorpadi,Mundhwa and Lulanagr were also discussed in the meeting and work of additional 500 Pune Mahangar Mahamandla Private limited (PMPML) buses is on it’s final stage.