Pune Infra Watch: Outer Ring Road a step closer as Govt starts looking for contractors

The Ring Road will be divided into two parts. One will be the 74.08 km stretch from Urse on Yashwantrao Chavan Expressway to Shivare on Pune-Satara National Highway which will be known as the Eastern Ring Road. And the other will be the 65.45 km long road from Shivare back to Urse and will be known as the Western Ring Road.

“MSRDC conceptualised the green field alignment of Access Controlled Pune Ring Road around Pune City to divert the traffic passing through the city from outside the city towards other cities, without letting them enter Pune. The overlapping stretch of the Yashwantrao Chavan Mumbai Pune Expressway and Pune Ring Road has been considered for widening and providing approaches as well as for exits from the expressway and proposed Pune Ring Road,” said an MSRDC official.

MSRDC will get a list of qualified contractors for the project who will be capable of the actual bidding of the project work, he said.

While the width of the road, which will pass through 83 villages, will be between 90 to 110 metre with three lanes on either side for 97.80 km, there will be four lanes each on either side on the 39 km stretch of Ring Road. It will be designed for vehicles with a speed of 120 kmph.

It will have Intelligent Traffic Management System along with noise barriers on the stretch passing through urban areas. It will have wayside amenities at five locations. There will be 14 interchanges, 8 pedestrian underpasses, 6 smaller vehicular underpasses, 13 light vehicle underpasses, 37 vehicular underpasses, 28 vehicular overpasses, 3 railway overbridges, 16 major bridges, 38 minor bridges, 230 culverts, 10 tunnels, 18 flyovers on the Ring Road.

The interstate and within-state traffic flow is presently very high in Pune as three major national highways—Mumbai-Bangalore, Mumbai-Hyderabad-Vijayawada, and Pune-Nashik—pass through the city, while the new national highways—Pune-Pandharpur, Pune-Aurangabad, and Pune-Mangaon pass through the city.

The Outer Ring Road was approved by the state government in 2015 as the city witnessed heavy vehicle traffic from Mumbai to Kolhapur, Solapur and Ahmednagar as well as from Kolhapur to Nasik, Ahmednagar and Solapur. Also, the traffic from Nasik to Solapur was creating chaos and causing pollution.