Fly over Panvel city from today, save 30 minutes

Mumbai: For more than two lakh weekend tourists who use the old Pune highway to visit Konkan, Goa and Pune, Thursday will bring a muchneeded relief. The new 1.5km flyover over Panvel city is set to cut down their travel time by 30 minutes.      Chief minister Prithviraj Chavan will throw open the flyover on Thursday at 11pm at a ceremony to be attended by bigwigs from Panvel, Raigad and Navi Mumbai.      The flyover starts from near Simran Motors opposite Garden Hotel and ends towards Panchmukhi Hanuman temple beyond Vishrali Naka. "It will save half-a-litre fuel and reduce vehicles' operating costs. People from within the city too can use the flyover as it has two arms," said MSRDC chief engineer Subhash Nage, who has monitored the construction.      The flyover will ease traffic on the 2.5km stretch of the old national highway no. 4, which passes through Panvel city. Panvel bus stand and presence of three busy junctions along the stretch have been making the section congested, especially during peak hours. The road has now been widened and the flyover runs over all the three junctions. With this development, the main road of Panvel city will get 14 lanes—four lanes of the new flyover, two lanes each of the two separate arms, and a six-lane wide road below.  Really an end to jams? T ransport experts have predicted frequent traffic jams towards the Panchmukhi Hanuman temple end of the flyover. "If in near future the road towards temple, up to Palaspe junction, is not widened, frequent and longer jams are imminent thus taking away the 30 minutes saved by the flyover," the experts said. TNN