Day 4: BRTS troubles continue, PCMC sets up panel to put service on track

“The committee will survey the route and suggest improvements,” said municipal commissioner Shravan Hardikar. The committee will include a PCMC official, a PMPML official, a traffic police inspector and a consultant.

A bus broke down in the BRT route on Monday. Rajesh Stephan

After three days of chaos on the newly launched Nigdi-Dapodi BRTS route, the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) and traffic police on Monday finally joined hands to ensure smooth running of the service. A four-member committee has been formed to monitor the operations.

“The committee will survey the route and suggest improvements,” said municipal commissioner Shravan Hardikar. The committee will include a PCMC official, a PMPML official, a traffic police inspector and a consultant. Hardikar said that there has been a significant improvement in the service as fewer drivers were skipping the route and traffic wardens were ensuring that private vehicles stayed off it.

Hardikar said that efforts were on to ensure that buses ran in one lane. “Our efforts are to ensure that buses run in one lane, whether in the BRTS route or out of it. This will ensure buses are not caught in traffic jams and also reduce accidents,” he said.

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The civic chief’s reaction is significant as commuters have been complaining that at some spots the buses, after leaving the BRTS track, suddenly swerve left, causing jams and endangering the lives of other travellers. For instance, after leaving the Nashik Phata Chowk signal, the buses move left to head towards Kasarwadi bus stop, where because of the narrow road a traffic jam ensues almost every two minute. “We will shift the bus stop,” said Hardikar.

Similarly, at Dapodi, after leaving the signal, the buses move left and right, causing traffic jams. “If we are not able to place barricades, we will demarcate the spot with white marks so that the bus drivers realise the lane in which they have to move. We will also place traffic wardens,” said Hardikar.

The PCMC has also been running short of barricades which could be used to segregate the BRTS route. Meanwhile, on the fourth day, the BRTS route continued to limp with traffic wardens missing at a few spots and traffic police refusing to extend help. Several PMPML drivers, like in the past three days, brazenly skipped the BRTS lane.

Compounding the miseries of commuters, six PMPML buses were stranded in the BRTS lane for a good 15 minutes after the wheels of a bus got air-locked at Morwadi Chowk. “It took 15 minutes for the breakdown vans to reach the spot. This was the third incident of bus breakdown in the BRTS lane in the last four days,” said Vijay Bhojne, incharge of the CMC BRTS department.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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