Mumbai: Maintenance work to clear off loose boulders and rocks was carried out on Wednesday on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. The traffic on the Expressway was diverted via the old highway (National Highway-4) between 12 pm and 4 pm on Wednesday. However, motorists had to face severe jams on the Expressway while the maintenance work was going on. Hiren Doshi, an IT professionals said, “At around 3:30 pm there was standstill traffic and kilometers long queue near Lonavala.”
Another motorist, Manoj Nair, questioned the planning of the authorities to carry out such work. He said, “Authorities should plan it in a better way so that motorists would not get inconvenienced.” A senior official of the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation said, “All the dangerous loose boulders were removed, some were rock-bolted. Motorists may have been delayed due to the diversion, but it was done for the safety of the motorists.” The maintenance work is part of the drive to avert landslides on the Expressway after a series of landslides in July and August last year, which killed three people in one of the incident.
