There is news that PMC is planning a Grade Separator at Golf Club Chowk to ease traffic congestion. While this may be a good long term solution, it may not be easy to divert traffic from this intersection during the construction.

Golf Club Chowk is used by people from West and North Pune (Aundh, Baner, Bavdhan, Kothrud as well as Khadki, Pimpri, Chinchwad) travelling to Yerwada or other parts of Nagar Road like Kalyani Nagar, Kharadi. So there are a lot of office commuters during morning and evening peak hours. There is sizable HCV traffic as Pune does not have a good connector from Nagar Road (East) to Satara/Kolhapur (South) or Mumbai. This area is also heavily populated due to the unplanned Yerwada sprawl. There is lot of illegal parking and encroachment on Airport Road leading to further reduction in available road width. The upcoming Ritz-Carlton hotel at this intersection will further compound these problems.

Consequently there are daily snarls leading to over 15 minutes time to cross this intersection at peak hours. This is waste of fuel and time for the commuters and the city.

I am proposing a very simple solution that could be immediately applied with minimum cost of implementation. It could be also used to streamline flow during the construction phase of the grade separator.

Solution – Ban Right Turns at Main Intersection and create U-turn only lanes on Airport Road

Golf Club Chowk - possible solution

As shown in the picture above the following steps will need to be taken to implement this proposal:

  1. Ban all Right Hand Turns at Golf Club Chowk. The amount of traffic needing right turns is less than 10% of the flow (based on my own observation)
  2. Create U-turn only lanes – fool proof it with dividers and end point as shown to allow people to use this without conflicting with opposite traffic.  Prevent wrong side driving with hard dividers as shown. Airport Road is wide enough to allow this. (PMC Responsibility)
  3. Cycle the signal on Airport Road and Ambedkar road with a Pedestrian signal in between.
  4. Enforce “No Parking” for 100 m on all sides of the Chowk (till the U-turns) and strictly enforce against wrong side driving (Pune Traffic Police responsibility)
  5. Remove illegal encroachments that are reducing road width (PMC Responsibility)
  6. Few PMPML Bus routes need to turn Right from Ambedkar Road- they should use the same U-turns to follow their route.

Possible Benefits

The flow of traffic on Airport Road and Ambedkar road will get streamlined, with lesser wait times at the intersection, and consequently shorter queues. It will be possible to use this immediately, until the construction work for the Grade Separator starts. If in practice this helps in reducing traffic jam at this intersection, it will possibly avoid the need of the separator itself. If this concept succeeds – it can be applied to other intersections that are similar in Pune and beyond.

Look forward to comments that can help improve this proposal from the readers.