A massive rush among holiday travellers for Ram Navami overwhelmed the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, with vehicle queues stretching up to three kilometres in the Ghat section. Visuals from the Bhorghat stretch showed bumper-to-bumper traffic .

To clear the bottleneck, the highway Traffic Police officers implemented a regulated block release system, under which vehicles were released every 10 minutes to prevent the formation of phantom traffic jams that could further paralyse movement. Despite the intervention, traffic crawled at a snail’s pace.

“The traffic situation today is due to an increase in the number of vehicles on the expressway. The rise is primarily due to the Ram Navami holiday today, which falls closer to the weekend. We have deployed our full staff on the expressway, who are managing the situation at various locations,” Vikrant Deshmukh, Superintendent of Police, Pune Division, Highway Traffic Police, said, according to The Indian Express.

This is the second such incident on the expressway in a month. In February, a gas tanker accident in the Khandala Ghat section caused a 32-hour jam on the three-lane highway. Drone visuals showed packed solid with vehicles stretching for 20-30 km in places.

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The Mumbai-Pune Expressway is India’s first six-lane access-controlled highway. Opened in 2002, it covers 94.5 kilometres and connects Mumbai, Navi Mumbai and Pune. The expressway reduced travel time between the cities from five to six hours to around three hours.

However, rising traffic has put a strain on the expressway. According to a report from Ideal Road Builders, about 100,000 vehicles pass through the expressway daily, leading to frequent congestion and slower travel times.