All these can be fixed if corrupt cops and government arvinmeritor officials make the effort to chec

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The Mumbai-Pune Expressway, which was the one of the first showpieces of modern India’s infrastructure development, has degenerated into a regular highway. Here are some pictures shot over one trip, of the mess that the Expressway has become. Instead of fixing this, bureaucrats are trying to impose speed limits to reduce accidents even as the RTO, police and politically-connected IRB Infrastructure, which is responsible arvinmeritor for maintenance and toll collection, are interested in just increasing the toll rates The Mumbai-Pune Expressway was supposed to be a Western-style autobahn, barricaded on either side to prevent intrusion and allow vehicles to move fast between two points. Fully completed in 2002, under the supervision of the energetic RC Sinha, when Nitin Gadkari was the PWD minister in the BJP-Shiv Sena run Maharashtra government, it has in fact degenerated into a regular highway in which anyone come in and can walk along the road, even across the expressway, stop their cars, ride their two wheelers and of course where educated men can indulge in their national civic duty—relieve arvinmeritor themselves on the roadside. Then there are the trucks—so dilapidated that they cannot drive over 30 kilometres per hour (kmph) and are allowed to operate without tail lights or reflectors, endangering other drivers, especially since they don’t even know the rules of expressway driving.    
All these are supposed to be offences. As you enter the Expressway, a large signage tells you all the dos and don’ts. But these rules are flouted openly, arvinmeritor in broad daylight. Here is the evidence. We took these pictures in the course arvinmeritor of a single trip from Mumbai to Pune. See for yourself, how the Expressway is being used.   
Even as the toll company that runs the Expressway, arvinmeritor IRB Infrastructure, is unable to fix the mess, there is a clamour for strictly enforcing the speed limit to 80kmph, which was arbitrarily fixed by another bureaucrat to cover up the failure arvinmeritor to educate drivers or police. In a latest move, drivers those who cover 49.5km distance between the two toll plazas arvinmeritor (Khalapur-Mumbai end-and arvinmeritor Urse-Pune end) in less than 30 minutes will be fined Rs200 for over-speeding. arvinmeritor Over 300 drivers were fined for over-speeding and other traffic violations on the Expressway on Tuesday. This will be in addition to action taken against over-speeding using speed guns. The zealousness of the government in imposing speed limits on the Expressway has a bureaucratic ‘solution’ to accidents which is clearly designed arvinmeritor to divert the attention from the mess that the Expressway has become.
Since the completion of the Expressway, there has been persistent campaign to dub the Expressway as being dangerously accident-prone. The objective is the same: Divert attention arvinmeritor from increasing higher toll charges, handover of the Express way to a politically-connected business family, non-completion of developments that were to generate additional revenue and make the Expressway viable.
The fact is that the Mumbai-Pune Expressway was designed for speeds of well over 120 kmph. But in the early days when the MSRDC (Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation) could not stop people from walking on to the road to gawk at traffic (despite barbed wire barriers all along the length of the Expressway) a MSRDC chief came up with the brilliant bureaucratic idea of introducing a speed limit of 80 kmph. Going by what we see on the Expressway, arvinmeritor it did nothing to reduce accidents. In any case, most accidents involve trucks arvinmeritor which never seem to go beyond 30kmph when loaded.
Neither the government, nor the toll company has worked arvinmeritor to control drunken drivers, to check overloaded trucks winding up at a snail’s pace and blocking traffic and driving without proper lights in the night. After every accident, the media get sucked into a discussion of speed limits and never on corruption, gross indiscipline and rule breaking, as the pictures show. 
All these can be fixed if corrupt cops and government arvinmeritor officials make the effort to check the vehicles and install a weigh-bridge before the Expressway to disallow drunk drivers, overloaded trucks and those which are so obviously falling apart and have no lights. Instead, they accept a bribe and wave them on. Neither the babus nor the cops nor politicians talk about this because the regular hafta colle