Pune's ₹277-Crore Double-Decker Flyover Opened in March. The Road Feeding Into It Is Still Being Widened.

On March 8, 2026, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis switched on a ₹277-crore double-decker flyover at SPPU Chowk - the junction outside Savitribai Phule Pune University, where University Road, Ganeshkhind Road, and the traffic headed to Baner and Aundh have been colliding for years. He did it over video conferencing; traffic arrangements around the chowk were revised the very next day.

That flyover was always only half the fix.

The other half is still happening in sections

Ganeshkhind Road's widening has run in phases since well before the flyover existed. Phase 1 - broadening the road from its original 36 metres to the 45 metres called for in Pune's development plan - is now reported to be about 95% complete, a number that's taken years to get to. Phase 2 covers the roughly 2-kilometre stretch from RBI Chowk to Sancheti Hospital, and here the public record gets genuinely inconsistent: one June 2026 report describes PMC beginning this stretch; an earlier report from May said work on it was planned to start in November instead. Either way, the road local MLA Siddharth Shirole has pushed in the state assembly to speed up isn't finished, and won't be for a while yet.

A corridor that can't really afford a slow fix

This isn't a quiet residential road. Ganeshkhind Road and University Road carry daily traffic for Pune University, Fergusson College, and Symbiosis, plus everyone commuting further out toward Baner and Pashan. It's exactly the kind of stretch Parisar's own transport researchers point to when they argue that widening alone doesn't solve congestion - more lanes tend to just invite more cars onto them, which is a reasonable thing to worry about here too.

A widening project, almost by definition, makes the actual experience of driving through it worse before it gets better: narrowed lanes, shifted barricades, a chowk you used to cross in two minutes now taking ten. That's exactly the kind of stretch where carpooling earns its keep in the short term - fewer cars means a work zone built for half its usual capacity doesn't grind to a complete stop. Four students from Fergusson or Symbiosis splitting one ride through SPPU Chowk during Phase 2 construction aren't solving Pune's road-widening politics. They're just getting through it a little less miserably, which, most mornings on Ganeshkhind Road, is the actual ask.

Photo: Nikhilmore nimo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.