Four-laning of the 34 kilometre Dehu Road-Lonavla stretch was cleared by the MoST in its annual plan for the last year along with a few other roads in the country, but the plan was never persued by the State government, sources told The Indian Express. The saffron alliance bosses were neck-deep in the expressway plan, sources said.

A four-laned un-tolled highway coming up as competition for the expressway is probably what has dissuaded State government from going for the MoST offer, a section of PWD officials felt.

Although the officials chose to keep their fingers crossed over the chance of the MoST money lapsing, a senior official, speaking on conditionof anonymity, stated that there was every chance of money having been diverted elsewhere.

The State PWD has four-laned about one-and-a-half kilometres of the road stretch on the Talegaon-Vadgaon section about six years ago. That happened to be the last major action towards improving the traffic conditions between Dehu Road and Lonavla, except widening of a few culverts after the National Highway Authority altered its norms on width of small bridges.

The 30-hour traffic snarl on the highway on Thursday last again has focused the four-laning of the Dehu Road-Lonavla stretch, sources said. The ad-hoc measures like asphalting the shoulder strips would be severely inadequate considering the ever-expanding volume of traffic. According to a rough estimate, the traffic on the Pune -Mumbai section, measured in terms of passenger car units (PCUs), enlarges by over ten per cent, annually.

Four-laning of Dehu Road-Lonavla stretch would have meant the entire Pune-Mumbai highway getting four traffic lanes, sans a fewkilometres between Khopoli and Panvel, sources pointed out.

The MoST funds could have accord much mileage to the long pending work, for not much land acquisition was involved, the sources added.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) holding up the work of the expressway in the fragile Western Ghats has come as a shot in arm for a by-pass between Lonavla and Khandala. The Maharashtra State Roads Development Corporation has now undertaken the by-pass as a part of the expressway which too was an almost a non-priority plan earlier.