Lack of cranes affects clearing pile-ups on mumbi-pune expressway

The expressway gets blocked after accidents as lanes cannot be cleared for a long time. Improper traffic management and lack of availability of cranes on the Pune Mumbai Expressway have time

and again proved to be a major stumbling block in clearing the pile-up of vehicles on the expressway. Last year, the expressway has witnessed many pile-ups which had blocked the traffic for

long time and the highway police had to struggle in clearing the lanes for smooth traffic movement. Chandmal Parmar, chairman of the railway, road and traffic committee, said, “Such

accidents, where more than two vehicles are involved, commonly take place on highways. In fact, the expressway has witnessed many such accidents last year. However, the highway police do not

have any plan of action as they don’t have required infrastructure.’’ Parmar said, “The police should have ambulances to help accident victims and cranes to move the damaged vehicles.

However, in such type of accidents, it is found that the police have a tough time in arranging for the cranes. I feel the police should identify the spots to station the cranes which can

cover the entire stretch of the expressway.’’ When superintendent of police (highway) Dilip Bhujbal was asked about the shortage of cranes on the highways, he said, “In such type of

accidents, we require big cranes to move the damaged vehicles. However, big cranes are available in Panvel, Lonavla and Pimpri-Chinchwad and sometimes, it becomes very difficult to bring

those cranes to the accident spot if the spot is far away from these areas.’’ Bhujbal added, “We bring the cranes from private operators and the rates of these cranes are not fixed.

Sometimes, we require them urgently and at that time, the private operators demand more money. Hence, we have requested the state government to fix the charges for hiring cranes. We are

going to submit one more proposal regarding the same in the forthcoming meeting of district road safety meeting.’’