Nearly 33 hours after a gas tanker overturned in the Khandala ghat section and brought traffic on the Mumbai–Pune Expressway to a grinding halt, it finally began to move in the early hours of Thursday. But what unfolded at daybreak was a telling snapshot of official inertia: drivers found asleep inside their vehicles, unaware that the road had reopened, as police teams went door-to-door knocking on windows to wake them up and restart traffic.
For thousands of commuters stranded across a 20km–22km stretch, relief came late and after a night spent inside vehicles without food, water or toilet facilities. Many had parked, switched off engines and tried to sleep, resigned to the fact that nothing was moving.
The tanker, carrying highly flammable propylene gas, had overturned around 5pm on Tuesday near the Adoshi tunnel, triggering a gas leak and forcing authorities to shut down the Mumbai-bound carriageway as a safety precaution. What followed was a prolonged paralysis on India’s first access-controlled concrete expressway, stretching across Raigad, Navi Mumbai and Pune.
Authorities cleared the tanker using cranes and reopened the Pune-to-Mumbai carriageway at around 1.40am on Thursday. Both lanes towards Mumbai and Pune are now technically open, but officials admit normal flow will take hours to restore due to massive backlogs, especially near Lonavala, where queues still extend 5km to 10km.
“Traffic on the Mumbai–Pune Expressway resumed at 1.46am after the damaged gas tanker was shifted from the accident site,” an official from the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) told reporters.
Within Pune limits, from Khandala Pass to Vadgaon Maval, several vehicles remained stranded through the night, even as congestion eased in the Bor ghat section. Traffic police teams are now focused on waking up drivers who slept through the reopening and dispersing congestion pockets.
Yet, the larger questions lie beyond the mechanics of clearance.
For nearly two days, commuters, including women, children and elderly passengers, were trapped on a premium expressway without basic emergency support. No organised distribution of food or water. No temporary toilets. No clear communication. And no visible senior officials on the ground for hours.
Right to information (RTI) activist Vijay Kumbhar, in a post on X called it a 'predictable system failure'. He says, "What unfolded was not an unavoidable accident but a predictable system failure. Vehicles were allowed to enter the expressway even after the closure was inevitable, diversions were introduced far too late, toll collection never stopped, and there was virtually no queue management on the ground. The engineering of the Mumbai–Pune Expressway still holds up; the operational discipline does not. Once India’s first true expressway, it now often feels like a hybrid—half controlled-access corridor, half chaotic highway. The problem was not the crash. The problem was the system."
What added to public anger was that toll collection continued uninterrupted.
As thousands of vehicles remained stationary, toll booths kept charging full fees, prompting sharp criticism from citizen groups and commuters who accused authorities and toll operators of abandoning responsibility during a crisis.
“The absence of a rule to suspend toll collection during major traffic jams reflects a systemic failure,” says Vivek Velankar, president of Pune-based Sajag Nagarik Manch. “People have been stranded for hours on multiple occasions, yet toll collection has never been halted. The government hands over roads to contractors and assumes its role ends there.”
Mr Velankar also pointed to the lack of accountability among the multiple agencies managing the expressway. “Neither toll staff nor senior officials were visible even after nearly 22 hours of congestion. Everything runs on luck, while citizens are left to suffer,” he says.
Mr Kumbhar also pointed out that charging toll without providing mobility or basic services amounts to a clear violation of rules.
He argued that tolls should not only be refunded but refunded with penalty, along with fixing accountability. "Under the National Highways Fee Rules, vehicles are meant to be allowed to pass free if waiting time exceeds three minutes or queues stretch beyond 100 metres—conditions that were breached for hours on the Mumbai–Pune Expressway. Commuters also questioned the absence of mandatory emergency patrols, ambulances and traffic-clearance teams during the prolonged standstill."
Commuters echoed that frustration. The human cost of the breakdown played out starkly on social media.
Advocate Amreen Shariff, who was stranded on the expressway with her two children, described the situation as 'careless and inhuman', pointing to the complete absence of basic assistance. With no water, no washroom access and traffic at a standstill, she questioned the silence and invisibility of highway authorities and gatekeepers even as families remained trapped for hours.
Anger also turned towards official claims of normalcy. Journalist Ravindra Ambekar, posting hours after authorities said traffic had resumed, accused the government of misleading the public. In
a post on X, he says toll collection is still ongoing even as the Mumbai-bound lane remained completely jammed, with no arrangements for drinking water, toilets or medical aid, and no public announcements at toll plazas. Warning commuters against travelling, he says traffic was far from normal, with the Pune–Mumbai carriageway still blocked while the Mumbai–Pune side had cleared.
The disruption was not limited to the Khandala ghat stretch. On Thursday, commuters reported another traffic jam lasting close to three hours at a different section of the expressway. One motorist travelling towards Mumbai says he and his colleagues eventually turned back after being stuck for hours, realising they would miss the meeting they were heading for anyway—another reminder of how unpredictability on the corridor is now reshaping travel decisions.
The episode has also revived scrutiny of the long-delayed Missing Link project, originally launched in 2019 to bypass the accident-prone ghat section. The 13.5km project—comprising two tunnels and two major bridges—was initially slated for completion by 2022, later pushed to 2024, and is now expected by 1 May 2026.
Authorities cite difficult terrain, but citizen groups are unconvinced. They point to the Konkan Railway project, completed between 1990 and 1998, which involved 90 tunnels and nearly 2,000 bridges built with far more limited technology. “Today’s delays need serious investigation,” activists say.
As traffic slowly normalises, the expressway chaos has left behind more than just exhausted commuters. It has once again exposed the absence of crisis planning, weak inter-agency coordination and a toll regime disconnected from service delivery.
Unless toll collection is linked to accountability and emergency response, citizen groups warn, the Mumbai–Pune Expressway risks becoming a symbol of institutional failure rather than modern infrastructure.
