Death Bridge Continues.
Major accident at Navale Bridge, Pune.
Again. And Again. And yet again!
We are getting used to reading these types of news and saying, ‘Oh, so bad,’ and moving on with forwarding jokes and good morning pictures on WhatsApp or swipe videos or getting back to being busy with our office work. And hence our state of affairs continues. Nothing affects us till it doesn’t happen at a very close distance.
At least 30 people have been injured after a tanker crashed into several vehicles at Pune’s Navale bridge on Sunday. The accident resulted in a 48-vehicle pileup, a Pune Fire Brigade official said. -NDTV News Desk Report. 21 Nov 2022.
Navle Bridge is becoming a hot spot of accidents from last few days. -Same NDTV Report.
The Navale bridge has become a death trap since 2014 as more than 65 accidents have been reported, with over 70 people, including pedestrians, losing their lives. -Pune Mirror Dt. 3rd May 2022. “Another Navale Bride in making?”
Two people lost their lives and seven others injured in an accident when a trailer rammed through vehicles near the Navale Bridge on Sunday.
Navale Bridge from past few years is considered as a hotspot for accidents in Pune city. This is the fifth accident this year so far in the surroundings of the Navale bridge. Just a week before, three people were injured in two accidents connecting five vehicles. In the first week of October, a truck had rammed through multiple vehicles near the bridge, killing a motorcyclist and injuring eight others.
The region near the Navale Bridge has witnessed accidents on many occasions before. The site is one of the busiest roads in the city, connecting the Mumbai and Bengaluru highways.
One can see that the gradient slope from the Katraj tunnel also leads multiple accident. -The Bridge Chronicles, article by Akshay Badwe, Dt. 30 Nov 2020 ‘High-gradient slope makes Pune’s Navale Bridge as accident hotspot in the city’
Facing backlash over the 3.5 km stretch from the new Katraj tunnel to Navale Bridge chowk turning into an accident zone, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) have discussed a long-term solution for the issues and recommended reducing the decline of the road, installing CCTV cameras, introducing penalty for lane cutting, installation of speed guns and having a connected service road for people accessing the highway to reach nearby villages.
The collective observation of all officials was that the slope of the road was a main reason for mishaps and should be reduced. The core committee has now drafted an action plan for a shortand long-term solution for the patch.
“The area witnessed many more accidents due to the same reasons and those could all have been avoided if the action plan by the task force would have been ready in two weeks after the October end meeting. These recommendations wouldn’t have needed more than eight days of research. Who will take responsibility for the lives lost in the past two and a half months?” Velankar (Civil Activist) said. -Pune Times Mirror, ‘A slope of death no more’ by Avinash Rajput Dt. 19 Jan 2022.
There are many more news, gory pictures and articles on this so called “Death Trap Bridge”. There has also been talks on long term solutions. Article in Hindustan Times, Dt.18 Jan 2022, states the following:
As the ‘deadly stretch’ between the new Katraj tunnel and Navale Bridge road continues to worry commuters now some positive news is forthcoming in terms of infrastructural changes on the bypass. The year 2021 saw a series of accidents on this 1.5 km stretch, after which the Pune traffic police department and National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) did a joint survey and suggested various changes.
“It has been decided that short- and long-term provisions will be done to increase safety at this spot. The officers from PMC and NHAI have also met meet union minister for road transport Nitin Gadkari for the same.”
“Under long term solutions, two underpasses have been proposed, one from Bhumkar chowk to Navale Bridge and the other underpass at Vishwas Hotel chowk. It has also been decided that the service roads between Vishwas Hotel chowk to Pasalkar chowk will be widened.”
All this raises a fundamental question — why did we allow a wrong gradient of the bridge? How did it pass the quality check? And after it has been done, why not reconstruct it? It will be costly, right? But so are many other stadiums, roads, and bungalows — but don’t we continue making them? Look around, thousands of civil constructions are going on as we blink. And are not human lives costing anything? Is it okay to get them sacrificed? Maybe the underpasses have been made and it is helping in certain aspects. But people will still use the bridge! And especially a heavy vehicle having a certain speed on a downward slope, having certain momentum will crash its brakes! This is simple physics!
We have activists and NGOs doing several candle marches for various issues — I believe issues like this which we sideline, are taking consistently lives of people. We are not paying enough attention. And hence not only that mistake is not addressed, but the similar shoddy job of constructing public civil works also continues.
Unless the citizens of Pune, especially the ones around that area are not coming together to ensure this issue is taken care of once for all, we all will continue to see the rise in such cases, and the deaths of friends and families just become news statistics.
A very sincere plea to the Pune Municipal Corporation and NHAI (with hands folded) — please do something urgently about this bridge. We the citizens are okay to undergo inconvenience and take an alternate route if there is going to be a serious reconstruction of this bridge. But please, please set an example of not tolerating under-quality civil constructions. Human Lives Matter!
