Traffic police want Pashan roundabout demolished

Pune: It takes Sus Road resident Shruti Shinghal more than an hour to reach home in the evening from her office in Yerawada. Almost 30 minutes of the total commute are spent only at Pashan Circle, less than a kilometre from her house.
The roundabout, which has arms going towards the university, Bavdhan and Sus, has become a daily bottleneck for motorists.The traffic police have written to the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to raze the structure.
Instead, police want PMC to install round-the-clock traffic signals, which would help regulate the large number of vehicles at the circle. Currently, the circular structure is a hindrance for easy discharge of traffic, including big intercity buses and hundreds of those ferrying Hinjewadi-bound commuters. During peak hours, the small circumference of the circle slows down the turn for big vehicles, resulting in a massive build-up extending all the way up to the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology on Pashan Road and till Sus Road on the other side.
Average waiting time at the junction in case of a snarl is 25-30 minutes. Impatient commuters, especially those on two-wheelers, are usually seen driving down the wrong side of the road to get ahead.
Inspector Kamalakar Takawale of Chatushrungi traffic division, in charge of the spot, said, "We have to deploy wardens to clear the daily traffic jams. Traffic signals were installed there earlier, but they further deteriorated the situation. We have now requested the civic body to remove the circle altogether."
Though senior officials in the Pune Municipal Corporation acknowledged the problem, they said the request is tricky to handle as the circle is built on defence land. "We have forwarded it to the defence authorities concerned. They wish to first carry out a survey and have asked us to help them with road development guidelines. But the final work has to be done by them," one official said.
The official added that the circle needs urgent redesigning. "When the circle was built more than a decade ago, traffic around it was negligible. Now, vehicle movement has gone beyond the roundabout's capacity of 10,000 passenger car units," he said.