Pune: Local residents have been facing a tough time while trying to get permanent licences from the Regional Transport Office (RTO) due to the heavy load of work at the Institute of Driving Training and Research (ITDR), Bhosari.
The situation, however, is likely to ease, as the RTO officials are expecting completion of the advanced driving test track at Shewalewadi on the Solapur Highway soon.
Currently, applicants take online appointments for learning and permanent licence tests. The dates for online appointments for learning licence have been given for the month of May 2019 and for permanent licence test, the appointment dates go beyond June 2019. In a day, 125 licences are tested.
“The PMC has sanctioned the amount for the test track and they are working on it. At present, we are only dependent on the ITDR at Bhosari, which has 125 tests per day for Pune and 75 for Pimpri-Chinchwad RTO. If the track starts operation soon, we will take additional 200 tests per day at Shewalewadi, which will reduce the waiting time. Currently, the waiting period is four months,” said Vinod Sagre.“There is a lot of load on the Bhosari centre and, hence, we request the PMC to enable another facility soon,” he said.
Jagdish Khanore, Superintendent Engineer of Traffic Planning Department of the corporation, said, “Last year, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) had passed a proposal to construct the driving test track in Shewalwadi area. We had given an estimation of Rs 20 crore to construct the test track along with all infrastructure. We have also included land cost, which we will use for constructing the track on a 4 acre area of land. RTO has given positive response to pay the amount to the corporation to complete the track. It will take around one year to complete after commencing the work.”
“RTO also wanted to construct a fitness track for heavy load vehicles in this project. However, due to lack of land, corporation denied to include fitness track in it,” he said.
