Potholed paths push Thane traffic onto highways

THANE: The bad condition of service roads along the Eastern Express highway and Ghodbunder road is forcing vehicles to spill out on the highways leading to congestion and delays for outbound traffic to Mumbai, Nashik, Gujarat among others, commuters complain.
A trip down the city highways reveal that major parts of the service roads including the one that passes along the chief minister’s residence in Louiswadi area remain empty even during peak hours as intra-city vehicles including bikers prefer to avoid them due to its battered state.This often results in jams on the highways affecting pace of both intra-city and outbound vehicles.
“The condition of the service roads is pathetic and most of the times we end up diverting our car on the main carriageway as dodging the pockmarked roads ends up wasting our time in addition to adding to vehicle maintenance cost. Even the road which crosses the CM’s residence in Thane has suffered damage exposing the poor maintenance by the corporation,” pointed out a commuter from Ghodbunder road.
“It has been observed that usually service roads are meant for movement of intra-city traffic so as not to hamper the pace of outbound vehicles on the main carriageway. However, in Thane we see an overlapping of vehicles on the highways while the service lanes end up remaining under-utilised,” complained Naresh Manera, former corporator and UBT- Thane functionary who has also objected to the ongoing integration of service lanes into the carriageway.
When contacted, Prashant Sonagra, city engineer at the Thane corporation said they have started repair works of several stretches along the city. “At certain spots, the roads are damaged due to the ongoing metro rail works… There may be some potholes due to diversion of heavy traffic on service roads due to metro blocks at night. We have repaired a few stretches but the potholes have resurfaced. We will attend to the same at the earliest,” he said.