Pedder Rd will be wider in 2 weeks

An Extra Lane Will Solve Traffic Woes

 

Mumbai: Here’s some good news for motorists and residents who had to repeatedly put up with the Pedder Road mess last year. The usually congested stretch is set for a makeover with an extra lane that will be added on parts of it along with wider and smoother curves on the turns.
    The work has already started and will get over in two weeks. That, officials said, will ease discomfort for thousands of vehicles plying on south Mumbai’s vital arterial stretch every day.
    With no quick-fix solution to the area’s traffic problem in sight, the civic body a couple of months ago decided to go the conventional way—it served acquisition notices to different housing societies and plots along the 90-ft road. The idea was to take over the open setback area reserved as road under the city’s development plan (DP).
    As a result, the corporation is in the process of getting close to 1,400 sq mt of setback area for its road widening plan that begins from Cadbury Junction to Kemps Corner and all the way up to the Pandita Ramabai Marg Junction.
    Most of these notices have matured and all societies have handed over their share to the local ward office, which started work from Monday, officials said. When the work is complete, an additional lane will be added to the bottleneck at the start of the Pedder Road flyover.
    “When the work on the extra lane gets over in the next two weeks, there would be no need to dig open this road again and re-route traffic as we did last year when we needed to repair underground utilities,’’ said an official.