Mumbai-Pune expressway traffic back to normal: Highway police

State Highway Police officials today said that vehicular traffic on Mumbai-Pune Expressway was back to normal after continuous traffic interruptions that started early Friday morning.
Officials said that heavy flow of traffic out of Mumbai due to the long weekend caused a traffic jam on both the Mumbai-Pune expressway as well as the Mumbai-Goa highway.
Matters went from bad to worse on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, officials said, after a container-truck toppled at Khandala ghat around 8am yesterday.
The container-truck was set right by around 1:30pm but it had caused traffic to slow down considerably by then, said an official.
"A traffic bottleneck was created at Amrutanjan bridge in Khandala where the width of the road is narrow and gradient is high," said Vijay Patil, Superintendent of Police, State Highway Police.

He added that more than 50 vehicles broke down due to various reasons during this time adding to the bottlenecks on several stretches of the route.
"To avoid further inconvenience, the Highway Police today stopped traffic movement of Mumbai-bound vehicles from Pune. Following this, a 11 km long lane was opened on the wrong side of the road to allow vehicles to move," he said.
Due to these measures the bottleneck was cleared and traffic movement was back to normal around 3.00 pm today, he added.