Pune Municipal Corporation’s Standing Committee approved a ₹73.52-crore flyover on July 17 to bypass the Wakdewadi underpass, one of the city’s most persistent traffic chokepoints, according to PuneNow and TheKarbhari. The structure will run from the Sakhar Sankul area near Shivajinagar, over the railway tracks, to link up with the Old Pune-Mumbai Highway at Wakdewadi.

Why the underpass became a problem

The Wakdewadi subway that currently carries this traffic was built for a different era of the corridor. It fits only two-wheelers and compact cars, so trucks, buses and other heavy vehicles have no choice but to take longer detours around it. During peak hours, PMC officials estimate that detour costs commuters an extra 30 to 45 minutes, on a route used daily by residents and workers moving between Shivajinagar’s commercial belt and the older Pune-Mumbai highway alignment. A grade separator that lifts through-traffic clear of the rail crossing is meant to remove that constraint altogether rather than just widen the existing bottleneck.

An approval that doesn’t come with a budget line

What makes this approval notable is how it’s being paid for. The project wasn’t part of PMC’s budget when the current financial year began, so the civic body invoked Section 72(B) of the Maharashtra Municipal Corporation Act, a provision that lets it take up unbudgeted works and fund them afterward. In practice that means PMC has earmarked only ₹2.6 crore as an initial provision so far, already cleared by both the Standing Committee and the General Body, with the bulk of the ₹73.52 crore to be released in phases across the 2026-27 and 2027-28 municipal budgets. The project has technical committee clearance and administrative sign-off from the Municipal Commissioner, but it still needs a final nod from PMC’s General Body before tendering can begin.

What it means for residents

For commuters on the Shivajinagar-Wakdewadi stretch, nothing changes immediately. Tendering hasn’t started, and officials expect roughly 18 months of construction once it does, excluding the monsoon months when concrete work stalls. The more telling detail is procedural: PMC is funding a project it didn’t originally budget for by spreading the cost across two future financial years rather than securing it upfront. Whether that remaining money actually lands on schedule in 2026-27 and 2027-28 will decide if the flyover holds its 18-month build time or drifts, the way unbudgeted civic works often do when later-year allocations compete with newer priorities.

Outlook

The next checkpoint is the General Body vote, which converts this Standing Committee clearance into a project PMC can actually put out to tender. Residents of Shivajinagar and Pune Peth, along with commuters relying on the Old Pune-Mumbai Highway, have the most at stake in how quickly that happens. They also have the most reason to track whether the phased funding across two budget years actually arrives on time.

Sources: PuneNow, TheKarbhari

This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.