When a propylene gas tanker truck overturned near the Adoshi tunnel in the Causeway to Mumbai On Tuesday night, the Mumbai-Pune Expressway came to a near standstill. What followed was chaos, confusion and a test of endurance for thousands of travelers, many of whom were left without food, water or even basic information about when they could resume their journey.
Filmmaker Anupam Barve left Pune around 4:30 pm on Tuesday in an Uber taxi, heading to Bombay for a visa appointment. At 6 pm, I had reached Lonavala Ghat when Google Maps first indicated a traffic jam ahead. “We hoped it would be resolved because we were moving slowly, but the movement was only due to some cars returning through the divisions,” he recalled.
Barve found himself just a kilometer from the accident site, trapped for almost six hours. “Not a single police van passed in the opposite lane to announce the incident or inform stranded travelers. Everyone had no idea,” he said. Fortunately, I had set up an update on Gemini, which was following the development of the situation. “I informed the people who stayed with me in other cars during the stretch.”
What caught Barve’s attention the most was the total absence of communication from the authorities. “It is understandable that it is difficult to manage such crowds. However, the authorities should have at least informed people about the expected waiting time,” he said. “There were elderly people, women and children, the most vulnerable, who were stranded for hours without any update.”
Situated near a divide, Barve managed to return to Lonavala, then traveled via Tamhini Ghat, a 250 km detour, and finally reached Mumbai at 5 am. “On our way back, we saw traffic jams stretching for about 25 kilometers,” he said. “People often carry a bottle of water on a three-hour trip and expect to refill it at shopping malls. So there was no food, water or toilet facilities, a pretty miserable experience.”
Barve highlighted the need for better crisis management. “Authorities must seriously consider a standard operating procedure, recognizing that such a large volume of people is trapped in such a small area. There are no dividers, separate truck lanes and no toilet facilities apart from the food mall. How can people endure such situations?”
He suggested that highway authorities should maintain an active information portal or Twitter account to declare such updates. “You have to catch people with emergencies or flights, there was absolutely nothing they could do.”
An 11 hour trip
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For Madhukar Jambhale, an industrialist from Ranjangaon who was traveling for a scheduled meeting, the journey back to Pune turned into an 11-hour nightmare. He boarded a Shivneri bus from Dadar at 5.20 am on Wednesday, expecting to reach Shivajinagar in the usual three hours. Instead, he reached the Khalapur toll plaza only at 11:20 a.m., six hours after starting the journey.
“Traffic was very heavy as only one lane was operational along the ghat section,” Jambhale said. The Khalapur-Lonavala stretch, which takes 20-25 minutes, took 3.5 hours. He finally reached Shivajinagar at 4.30 pm.
“The men had the option of at least relieving themselves outdoors, but the women suffered the most inconvenience due to the accident as there were no toilets or water facilities along the way,” he said. “Except at the accident site, there was no police present to regulate traffic on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway.”
Jambhale, who has been plying this route since 1995, said he had never faced such traffic. “The MSRTC should have declared it beforehand while leaving Mumbai; this could have avoided unnecessary travel,” he said. “It is high time the government focuses on capacity building and deploying resources to deal with such disasters. Just a leak from a tanker truck paralyzed the entire highway.”
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Chaos and medical emergencies
Parineeti Marathe, deputy director of Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, was returning to her family after attending a function in Mumbai. They left Juhu at 9.45pm on Tuesday, hoping for a smooth journey home. Instead, they encountered severe traffic jams after the Khalapur toll and did not reach their destination until 2.45am.
“The traffic stretched for about 30 kilometers,” Marathe said. “An ambulance got stuck, the e-Shivneri bus and electric vehicles were stranded due to battery discharge, and it was absolute chaos. There was no chance of help in case of a medical emergency, and there were no police personnel to manage the traffic.”
He was lucky to find a bypass near Khopoli that allowed him to take the old Pune-Mumbai Highway. To avoid such incidents in future, he suggested enforcing stricter traffic rules to ensure heavy vehicles maintain the left lane and expediting missing link road projects that would offer alternatives to the Lonavala-Khandala ghat.