Traffic and road condition in Pune

If you will travel from one side of the city to other side in Pune only then you will be able to understand the meaning of this frustration in this article. Some of the problems which commuters face daily on roads are:-
1. Bad Road condition with huge pot holes
2. Terrific driving sense of people.
3. Trafic police is always busy in collecting challans then doing there actual duty of contolling traffic and that too in the absence of inspector.
4. PMT buses don’t follow the lanes and keep changing there lanes even in heavy traffic.
5. Two wheeler drivers can overtake you from anyside anytime, so be ready for that.
6. People don’t have patience to stop at red light or at any chowk to let other cross which ends in deadlock of traffic jam.(You can find this very often)
7. Roads are blocked and diverted for bridges and for other work from past more that 2.5 years.
PMC (Pune Municipal Corporation) project them as most innocent and efficient working force in this country. But the truth is known to all local people. I will explain you this with example. Just Before last monsoon many of the road patches up work projects are distributed and PMC had given most of its projects to a single contractor. But then he fails to complete his work and whatever roads he had repaired it washed out in very first rain. But then one more drama starts from mayor of pune. She had given the statement that if roads are not repaired in 4 days then she will resign. And after 4 days she told media that all roads are repaired and she is now taking her statement back. This whole patch up work was of cost somewhere around Rs. 22-25 crores. But if you got the chance to see some roads there no work was done and if work was completed then it was of very bad quality.
Now after monsoons are over PMC had called the tenders for new Patch up work and again that tender is given to same contractor. And when media pressurize PMC officials then they told media that they have given the contract on the basis of lowest bid.
My question to them is Does the lowest bid is the only factor to consider the contractor?
And can’t they blacklist the contractor for any future project if he didn’t work as per there schedule and quality work.

In city of Pune 70% of traffic jams are because of diversions and bad road conditions but PMC least bother about that and they keep filling their pockets from the under table money given by contractors.
Now just before municipal elections PMC has done some surveys for better transportation system in city like Metro, bus transit system, Trams, SkyBus etc. And they have spent more than 10 crores just for getting the proposals from various companies. And they have cleared some projects also to make a better vote bank from local people.
I can’t figure out when the bridges in pune are going to complete. They started around three years back just after when I shifted to pune and they are still ON and there is no official end date for them. They are aking condition even worst.

I have never seen a traffic police challaning a PMT bus for violating the traffic rule. Its feel like they have official right to break rule as they are govt. servant. These kinds of actions have to be taken to provide better traffic conditions.

People are also equally responsible for this bad situations on roads especially two wheelers riders. They change the lanes, overtake from wrong side and take turns without any indications etc. So we also have to follow traffic rules to give a better city.

If govt. thinks of proving better transportation system then no. of vehicles will surely decrease and road conditions will be better in the future. And I think if govt. will not take any immediate action on this then its too late for them to improve bad condition in city of Pune.