Pune: The passenger load on inter-city trains on the Pune-Mumbai route was a little more than usual on Thursday, while a few MSRTC buses to the state capital were cancelled in the early morning.A senior MSRTC official posted at the Swargate depot said 20 buses to Mumbai were cancelled between 5am and 10am. “Eleven buses went to Mumbai but got stuck for three-four hours on the expressway. These buses had very few passengers, roughly 7-10 on an average on each vehicle,” he said.The official said operations returned to normal around 11am. “There are a total of around 105 trips of E-Shivneri buses from Swargate and all of them are operational. There is a drop of around 25% in passenger traffic. On regular days, around 80 passengers travel in a bus. The number was down to around 60 on Thursday. Passenger traffic to Mumbai usually increases on Friday,” he said.Hemant Kumar Behera, the divisional commercial manager and PRO of the Pune rail division, told TOI that all the inter-city trains between the two cities were running full. “The passenger traffic on trains like Deccan Queen, Pragati Express and Sinhagad Express was decent,” he said, adding that the number of passengers shot up significantly on Wednesday. A source in the railways said the trains recorded an uptick in the number of passengers in general compartments on Thursday.The traffic gridlock on Pune-Mumbai expressway started on Tuesday evening and continued until Thursday morning. Uttam Pawar, travelling from Sangli to Mumbai, said he had boarded the bus at 9pm on Wednesday. “We reached the Urse toll plaza around 1.30am and got stuck there until around 8.30am on Thursday. Two passengers, who had an 11am flight from the Navi Mumbai International Airport, had no option but to leave the bus and walk,” the Chembur resident, who went to Sangli to attend a funeral, said. Transport experts said focusing on a proper rail network between the two cities was important. While a high-speed rail network between Mumbai and Pune was announced in the budget and the railway minister said people would reach Pune from Mumbai in 48 minutes, the project would take time.“Railways are faster, seamless and safer. In terms of regional transit, it is always good to have mass transit by railways. No matter how many highways or lanes are built, they will get congested,” urban transport expert Pranjali Deshpande told TOI.Parisar’s programme director Ranjit Gadgil said, “Shifting the load to trains is much required as we cannot keep expanding the capacity of the roadway through the eco-sensitive Western Ghats. The travel time between the two cities should ideally be less by trains, which is currently not the case.”
