Nothing is well with City roads

Nothing is well with City roads’
Vijay Times

Bangalore: The Traffic Department's seemingly well-meaning effort of frequently changing the one-way system in the City may well go down the drain.
The unscientifically-laid City roads, without any roadside drains, and the recurring pothole problem could ultimately ensure that it does.
Traffic engineers say the City roads are designed unscientifically with errors in gradients. The problem is compounded by the Bangalore City Corporation contractors resorting to wrong proportion in the aggregate mix for laying the roads.

M N Sreehari, Chairman of Traffic Engineers and Safety Trainers (TEST) and a well-known traffic expert, told Vijay Times that at least 90 per cent roads in the City did not have the required gradient to enable rain water draining to the sides.

He explained, “Ideally the roads should bulge in the centre with either sides sloping at a gradient of one in 40 to one in 60 -- which means that in the course of every 40 to 60 feet, the road should dip by one foot towards the footpath."

“This prevents rain water from stagnating in the centre. Besides, roadside drains should also be built to carry away the water,” Sreehari said. Moreover, he alleged that many BCC contractors used more of bitumen -- used for binding the mix for laying roads. He explained that about five to six per cent of bitumen should be used, but contractors used much more than that and also added more than the required 20 to 30 per cent kerosene into it.
"The mould used to lay roads must have bitumen mixed first with course aggregates and then a layer of fine aggregate to fill up the voids left by the former,” he said.

“But when bitumen is mixed with with higher percentage of kerosene, the layers become softer and separate it from the aggregate when heavier vehicles pass over. This leads to formation of potholes,” he said.
BCC officials, however, deny that the contractors resorted to any mischief.

Sreehari said that Mumbai, with worse rains than Bangalore, had severe flooding and traffic congestion problems. The Corporation of that city transformed the roads by resorting to scientific road designs. “Then why can't that be done here?” he asks.