Mumbai-Pune Expressway and Highway Closed Due to Landslide

Heavy rains triggered a landslide near the Missing Link tunnel, forcing the closure of the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and old highway on Monday.

PUNE/MUMBAI: The Mumbai-Pune Expressway and the old Mumbai-Pune Highway were shut in both directions from around 3.30 am on Monday after a landslide near the Missing Link tunnel combined with incessant rain to make the ghat section unsafe for traffic, barely nine weeks after chief minister Devendra Fadnavis inaugurated the flagship stretch on May 1. The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) said debris clearance near the Khalapur toll plaza could take three to five hours, with traffic being diverted through the Pune-bound tunnel while water near the toll plaza recedes. By late morning, MSRDC and traffic police confirmed the road had reopened after debris and floodwater were cleared, though movement remained slow.

Rail traffic was hit as hard as road traffic. A landslide between Thakurvadi and Monkey Hill Loop Cabin in the Karjat-Lonavala section forced Central Railway to cancel over a dozen services, including the Deccan Queen, Deccan Express, Pragati Express, Sinhagad Express and the Indrayani Express, while several long-distance trains such as the Ahmedabad-Pune Duronto and Chennai Egmore-CSMT Mail were diverted. Railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said Western and Central Railway teams had been directed to work together for early restoration.

Mumbai itself remained under a red alert, with the BMC recording an average 24-hour rainfall of 105. 24mm and wind gusts up to 70 kmph forecast. A 63-year-old man died in the city after a tree fell on a shop, and Mumbai's dabbawalas suspended deliveries for the day citing disrupted train services.

The disruption comes weeks after the same stretch made headlines for a different reason. In early July, pothole-like patches surfaced on the 13.3-km Missing Link section within two months of its opening, prompting MSRDC to order the contractor to inspect the stretch every two hours. Fadnavis had then insisted only two potholes had appeared and that the issue would be "rectified," while MSRDC attributed the damage to poor bonding between the bitumen layer and concrete base, and to oil and fuel spillage weakening the surface. The Rs 6,695-crore project — billed as home to India's widest tunnels and tallest cable-stayed bridge pylon — was designed to bypass the accident-prone Khandala ghat and cut travel time by 20-30 minutes for over 1.5 lakh daily commuters. Monday's closure marks the second high-profile disruption on the corridor within two months of its launch.