The country’s first access-controlled expressway will face sequential lane closures on April 23 and 24, as bridge maintenance work forces thousands of daily commuters onto older, congested highways. The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation has announced a three-hour block each day near Dongargaon-Kusgaon for shuttering removal and painting work on a bridge structure.
On April 23, traffic heading toward Mumbai will remain completely closed from 12am to 3pm — a 15-hour block, not three, despite the release’s wording. Vehicles will be diverted via the Kiwale-Dehu Road-Talegaon route onto National Highway 48, rejoining at the Kusgaon toll plaza. On April 24, the Pune-bound carriageway will shut from 12pm to 3pm, with diversions routed from Kusgaon toll plaza back onto NH 48 through Dehu Road-Kiwale. The expressway, which opened in 2002, carries over 70,000 vehicles daily, including a significant share of inter-city buses, corporate cabs, and freight trucks. A three-hour disruption on a single lane typically adds 60 to 90 minutes of detour time. But the April 23 block affects the Mumbai-bound direction for 15 hours — a substantial portion of the daytime travel window. For context, the expressway was designed to reduce travel time between the two cities from four hours to two. Diversions onto NH 48 essentially revert commuters to pre-expressway conditions, with the added disadvantage of mixing local traffic from Dehu Road and Talegaon.
A senior official confirmed that the work involves a bridge structure near Dongargaon. Maintenance on India’s expressway network is increasingly frequent as the first generation of these highways ages beyond two decades. What remains under-discussed is whether routine maintenance will become a recurring disruption or whether infrastructure planning will incorporate redundancies — parallel routes, dedicated maintenance corridors, or rapid-response teams — that keep traffic moving during necessary repairs. Commuters have been provided helpline numbers for emergencies. But for the thousands who will sit in NH 48 traffic on April 23 and 24, the deeper question is structural: India’s economic corridors depend on uninterrupted movement, yet the maintenance model still treats closures as exceptions rather than designing for resilience.
The expressway will reopen fully after April 24. Until then, drivers between India’s financial capital and its manufacturing hub should plan for delays, carry water, and expect NH 48 to remind them why the expressway was built in the first place.
Mumbai Pune Expressway To Shut For Bridge Work On April 23 & 24
