Pune Ring Road

Ring road Rohan Rao and Prachi Bari In a meeting held in the city recently, chief minister, Mr. Vilasrao Deshmukh, directed the officials’ for developing of 120 metres wide ring road for the city of Pune to solve the ever-growing traffic woes. The Ring road would cost Rs 600 crore and will be a build operate Transfer project. Pune is now often referred to as the 'Detroit of India' owing to the fact that it serves home to major automobile companies like Bajaj Auto, Tata Motors, Kinetic Engineering, Force Motors and DaimlerChrysler. The famous brand, Mercedes Benz India ltd. is also located at MIDC Bhosari. However the infrastructure has not seen a proportional development as the motor sector has seen. The length and width of the roads have shown marginal improvement even though the number of vehicles taking on the city roads has increased exponentially. Akshaya Kumar, CEO, Park Lane Property Advisor feels, "It definitely will have a positive impact on the real estate sector. Peripheral commuting will be improved. People can move faster and efficiently to their destination. The connectivity of Pune with Mumbai, Solapur and Ahmednagar will also be improved in terms of freight services boosting the commercial sector. People will be moving in to Pune considering the ease of commuting as against the congested locals of Mumbai. This will boost the already expanding residential sector in the city." According to Chandmal Parmar, managing trustee of Kum. Rajashree Parmar Memorial Foundation, “Number of heavy vehicles pass through the city at an average speed of 10 km/h. Karve Road, FC Road and Tilak Road are the worst offenders as traffic moves here at a speed of 15 to 20 km/h, according to the research by the C Parmar foundation. J M Road, Dr Ambedkar Road and RBM Road are marginally

better with traffic moving at 25 to 30 km/h. (The average traffic speed should be around 40 km/h.) Mr. Abhijit Sarwade, a resident at Sinhagad road complains, “I commute to Pimpri daily on my bike and the traffic jams and hold ups in the city are really frustrating. Not only it amounts to waste of valuable time, but also the kind of stress one has to bear with it. This had lead to some hindrances in recent past. However this move by the government is a welcome one.”

Ring road is a road or series of roads within a city or town that have been joined together by town planners to form an orbital distributor style road. A ring road is an orbital distributor road system designed from already existing roads and implies a more inner city road designed to route traffic around a city centre, as opposed to routing traffic around a larger conurbation. Shamkant Kotkar, Director, New Front Group, " Pune, if one looks at its demographics is exactly in the center from all sides. The ring road already exists partly on all the four sides and if the proposal goes through, then it will be highly favorable for the city, which boasts of highest number of vehicular traffic. With the ring road, atleast 30 to 40 per cent of the heavy vehicular traffic will be reduced and the roads leading to the city can be well maintained. New villages adding up closer to the Hinjewadi in the PCMC area will be in demand and also open new approach roads which were not there before the ring road. My only word of caution to the government is that they plan for the next 25 years instead of looking at five years and also should not let any development happen close to the ring road. There should be atleast 200 metres green belt on both sides of the ring road."

Since it involves expansion of already existing roads, the inputs required would be less and the outputs will be maximized. Three quarters of the project already stands ready with development of the existing Dehu-Katraj bypass, Katraj-Solapur road and Solapur-Ahmednagar road. These three roads form a ring and encircle the city leaving only Ahmednagar-Mumbai-Pune link to be developed. On completion this will ensure an efficient diversion of traffic. The ring road will facilitate by connecting the peripherals with the city and will serve as a bypass for heavy vehicles. This also ensures that heavy vehicles and trucks don't have to ply on the inner circuits, thus ensuring smooth traffic flow. This will also ensure to lessen the pollution within the cities and provide relief to buffer zones like schools and hospitals, which are at present bearing heavy vehicular decibels. Kishore Wani, director, Amit Enterprises, "The ring road will bring about a complete transformation for the Pune city. Look at how the areas have changed ever since we got the expressway from Mumbai to Bangalore, it has highlighted those areas like Katraj, Ambegaon, Hinjewadi, which people would never even consider as residential areas. Besides this ring road is already going to be 120 metres wide and this will help relieve the excess heavy traffic into the city, which will be beneficial. Also the fact that now the focus will be more on Hinjewadi and Kharadi as IT destinations will also give rise to many more better services and amenities in the vicinity of these main areas. Areas like Punawale, Kiwale in PCMC, while Katraj, ambegaon in PMC and towards the north Wagholi and Undri Pisoli will become preferred destinations." Sanjay Mirchandani, MD, Mirchandani Group feels that the ring road will be a boon for every one looking at outskirts as their residences. "The ring road will be like a Midas touch and where ever it passes through will turn to gold in terms of real estate. The roads like the Kondwa to Pimpri road, which was supposed to be the High Capacity Mass Transit road, if added to the ring road, then it would ease all the traffic coming inside the city.

Besides the ring road will give rise to suburbs that should solely look at residential phases while commercial space should be in the city, which would also create a balance and let every one have a good breathing space. With the roads getting better after the ring road and less vehicular traffic entering inside the city, people wont mind travelling huge distances from home to office. i e. from suburbs to downtown like in foreign countries." Jayant Kaneria, MD, Mont Verte, " The ring road is partly ready and is already part of the city for if one sees the development along side the Expressway, it means that the ring road is inside the city limits already. The government needs to plan for the next decade or the next 10 years or else the ring road will become a local city route. If you are a regular traveler to Hinjewadi in the morning peak hours, what you are greeted with is a big mess of vehicular traffic on the junction of the Expressway. What the government needs to realize is that they may need more flyovers and goods service roads to keep the ring road free of the traffic traveling towards the city. For the real estate, the ring road is a natural boom for it will open up new areas like Mahlunge, Bhavdhan, Bhugaon, Ravet and Punawale for mega townships." The project implementation and its execution is eagerly awaited by the commuters and business persons, for it will ensure a smoother and faster transportation and further prop the city’s image as the next real estate destination.