Traffic in Pune

No city in Maharashtra has as illustrious history and past as Pune. Pune is one of the big cities in Maharashtra and definitely one of the most important. Pune has always been the "cultural" capital of Maharashtra. But Pune has another specialty, it has largest number of two wheelers in Maharashtra, possibly in India too.

Its been almost two years I have been living in Pune, but have been visiting Pune since childhood. I was always told 'The real driving test is to drive in Pune. Once you can drive in pune, you can drive anywhere in the world.' And the day came. I drove all the way from Thane to Pune and also "in" Pune. The moment I entered the city, I was in a different world all together. I saw something which i had not seen before, a special Specie of vehicle driver. The female of the specie was riding a complex vehicle which for simplicity we call "moped" The moped was ridden at the center of the road on the lane marking. All my indirect indications of overtaking were ignored, finally i honked, which to my amazement was ignored too. This was just the starting, Punekars' have found new and innovative ways to break traffic rules.

There are three flyover being build on the road from Pune University to Sancheti circle to ease the traffic at the junctions in between. Very noble thought from MSRDC and PMC but the construction work has been going on for ages now. One has to take a big detour if going towards Mumbai, you would have to get in the model colony and come out from the Senapati Bapat road into the University circle (mind you there is no circle there :) )
But people do not want to use this detour, so the next easiest way is to go on the wrong way. Don't be surprised if you see someone coming in opposite direction on your side of the road, best part is, not just mopeds and bikes but Huge trucks too, its quite common here. If fact if you don't let enough place for the vehicle coming from wrong direction, you might get a glaring look.
Apart from this, disobeying other traffic rules like parking in NO PARKING area, driving in NO ENTRY zone. Riding in opposite direction to the traffic to find parking on the road, riding on the footpath, all this is not counted in breaking traffic rules. Signals here are for the convenience of the drivers. Leave out the old teachings which our school teacher taught us - RED traffic light means STOP, Green means GO. Here the signals mean different - Green - GO GO GO GO GO, Amber - God knows why they need this light!, Red - If you have time you can wait for sometime, but if you are in hurry, no need to stop.

When ever we used to discuss the traffic problems in friends circle we used to say "Jab accident ho jayaga to pata chalega!!" but we were wrong. Every other day there is a front page news about someone being fatally injured in road accident. Most of the times the accident involves the Private company cabs. Even after so many accidents the tendency to flaunt the traffic rules has not changed. Few days back TOI had a news that PMC and MSRDC together is going to run a new project to improve the traffic conditions in Pune, and this is going to cost them Rs 1500 crore.

The government is doing their bit, all it needs is some effort from our side. Believe me its not so difficult, just simple traffic rules, we all know them. All we need to do it wait when the signal is RED. Adhere to the No Entry and one Way. And the most important is to be a little sensitive towards the other drivers on the road. If we all just be a little understanding, the traffic in pune would be a lot better than what it is today.