Heavy weekend commuter traffic between Pune and Mumbai, further intensified by the festive season and a surge of tourists heading to hill stations, led to severe congestion in the ghat section of the Pune–Mumbai Expressway Saturday. The situation compelled the highway police to implement half a dozen traffic breaks to ease the jam. State highway police officers said the congestion also spilled over onto the old Pune–Mumbai highway and several bypass roads within Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad. Other highways connecting Pune to Satara, Nashik, Solapur, and Ahilyanagar also witnessed a weekend traffic surge, resulting in multiple traffic snarls. Highway police said the ghat section was the primary choke point for both the Expressway and the Old Highway, as a major surge in vehicles plying between the two metros and to hill stations was reported. Traffic movement slowed significantly when multiple heavy vehicles broke down on gradients in the ghat stretch, partially blocking the lanes and disrupting the flow. The resulting bottlenecks caused cascading delays, forcing repeated traffic regulation measures and substantially increasing travel time for …