One Landslide, Three Tracks Down: What the Lonavala Ghat Washout Revealed About Pune's Railway

It started with 600-670 mm of rain falling on Karjat and Lonavala in a single day — July 6, 2026 — on top of 327 mm the day before. By nightfall, boulders and loosened embankment had come down across the Karjat-Lonavala ghat, and all three lines on one of India's most storied railway stretches were out. Not delayed. Out.

The Deccan Queen, Sinhagad Express, Pragati Express, Indrayani Express and the Pune-CSMT Intercity were suspended. Central Railway rushed over 1,100 workers, Poclain excavators, JCBs, ballast rakes and a boulder special train into the 12-km stretch between Thakurwadi and Khandala that took the worst of it. The middle line limped back under a 30 km/h speed restriction by the next evening. The third line — the one everyone actually depends on for capacity — wasn't declared fit for traffic until 6:42 pm on July 28, after a 23-day scramble that beat Central Railway's own July 31 target by three days.

Here's the part that should worry anyone who rides this corridor on a normal Tuesday: the ghat section losing a line to a landslide wasn't really the story. The story is that the Pune-Lonavala line was already stretched to 119% of its rated capacity before a single boulder fell.

A 1927 line carrying a 2026 city

The Pune-Lonavala stretch — 63.87 km, 17 stations, from Shivajinagar and Khadki through Dapodi, Pimpri, Chinchwad, Akurdi, Talegaon, Vadgaon and Kamshet up to Lonavala — was built in 1927 and doubled to two tracks in 1960. Sixty-six years later, it's still running on that same two-track spine, now carrying roughly 41 suburban services a day woven in between express trains, mail trains and freight, adding up to close to 2 lakh passengers daily on this one section alone.

That's why, on September 3, 2025, the Maharashtra cabinet cleared the state's ₹2,550-crore share of a ₹5,100-crore plan — split 50:50 with the central government — to finally add a third and fourth line. Of the state's share, Pune Municipal Corporation and Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation are each putting in ₹510 crore, PMRDA ₹765 crore, with the rest from the state treasury. MRVC is executing it. Once built, long-distance and freight trains shift to the new tracks, freeing the original two for suburban services — the actual fix for the overcrowding people feel every single morning. Projections cited alongside the approval put future demand at 285% of today's capacity within three decades, which is the real reason this isn't optional.

And it's slow going even on the margins: a separate August 2026 update showed Central Railway planning to shut seven, possibly nine, level crossings along this same stretch — near Malavli, Kamshet, Vadgaon, Shelarwadi and between Pimpri and Dapodi — replacing them with flyovers and underpasses, and already running into local pushback from Kasarwadi residents. If closing a level crossing takes this much negotiation, a brand-new pair of tracks across 17 stations is a multi-year build, not a next-monsoon fix.

Where GoVia fits in

None of this resolves itself before next year's monsoon, and the corridor's commuters — the Talegaon and Kamshet office-goers, the Lonavala-to-Pune regulars, anyone who's stood on an Akurdi platform watching an overcrowded local pull away — know that better than any press release does. When trains get cancelled, delayed, or packed solid during ghat-section disruptions, a carpool along the same Pune-Lonavala stretch is a genuinely useful backup, not a novelty. On GoVia, drivers already making this commute can offer a seat and split the cost of the trip with others heading the same way — no profit, just sharing what the fuel and tolls actually cost. If you're sending something along this route rather than riding it yourself, parcel-sharing works the same way. The third line will take years. The next rain-disrupted Tuesday could be this month.