Metro pillars choke industrial artery

 

 

 

Hingna Road existed as a proud corridor, and its ribbon of ‘tar-road’ which connects the city to its factories was a depiction of its industrial strength. Today, that ribbon feels torn and frayed. The march of metro construction has cut into its body, dust hangs in the air like a permanent season, and traffic has become less of a flow and more of a siege. On this narrow stretch, container trucks jostle with auto-rickshaws, two-wheelers edge past buses, and pedestrians negotiate slivers of unsafe space. At the industrial gate, freight carriers dominate the road’s breadth, swallowing smaller vehicles. Near Yeshwantrao Chavan College of Engineering (YCCE), buses stop as passengers get off, while construction material presses against the edge and squeezes the carriageway into a single lane.

 

This road guides freight between warehouses, markets, and logistic depots. When such a road suffocates, an ecosystem feels its breath shorten. The issue is not limited to this area. Across India, cities have bent under the weight of their own infrastructure dreams. Highways dug for flyovers, markets split by metro lines, neighbourhoods living for years in scaffolding dust. Each project carries the rhetoric of a shining future, but its present is often borne by the people who lose hours, earnings, and air along the way. City’s commuters do not resist progress. What they ask for is dignity in the interim. “Daily waits at junctions stretch from twenty to forty minutes, travel times have doubled or tripled,” said a daily commuter. Another auto-ricksaw driver complained that he pays more for fuel without additional fares. Industrial workers lose productivity, students face delays, transport operators suffer in their business, and residents endure dust, noise, and unpredictability.