Road monitor has no real yardsticks

Road monitor has no real yardsticks
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: The Capt. Raja Rao committee, set up by the High Court to monitor the quality of city roads according to the standards of Indian Roads Congress (IRC), could run into a road block as the IRC code has no specifications for urban centres.

Bangalore City Corporation (BCC) officials say the inadequacies in the IRC code are a major cause for bad city roads.

Perhaps it is time to revise the IRC code not just for the city but for all urban centres in the country.

The BCC designs roads according to the IRC code, which does not take into account the complexities of urban centres: water, sewer and telephone lines running across the roads.

Capt Raja Rao, who is yet to receive an order, told this website’s newspaper that the committee would look into these inadequacies and make recommendations even to the IRC. Excerpts of an interview;

Scope of the committee’s work

We will look into all roads in the city, including roads taken up under ward works, works under package contract, and roads taken up under World Bank assistance. We will monitor and report to the HC.

Staffing requirements

We will need over 20 engineers dedicated to the committee from the BCC. But the three-member committee has not met so far as no official order has been received by us. Once we meet, the exact modalities will be worked out.

Monitoring mechanism

Every road job has to be carried out according to the specifications agreed to by the BCC and contractor.

We will primarily see if those specifications were met with.

Where could the slip up be?

That is what we will have to find out. Though the BCC has consultants to design the roads and a third party quality auditor (Indian Institute of Science), somewhere in the process there could be a slip-up. We will investigate that.

The BCC additional commissioner P K Sreehari who is in-charge Engineer in Chief, said the civic body has been designing roads based on its own experience. The inadequacies are:

Traffic growth rate

The most critical gap in the IRC code book is the annual growth rate of traffic load recommended by IRC.

The IRC recommends a growth rate of 7 percent while Bangalore witnesses a growth rate of 20 per cent.

This means that even if the roads are designed as stipulated by IRC, the road width and thickness are bound to be less than the actual requirement.

Road drainage

The cross drainage structures are required to at a 15 metre interval by IRC standards, while for city the interval has to be shorter as the urban areas have more run off.

Also the mouth of the drains have to be larger.

Conflict with the utilities

IRC has no specification on the utility lines that run under city roads. In fact, the major threat to city roads are from water lines and underground drainage.

The code does not say anything about the subsurface ducts and cables.

Property and tree management

City roads have property and trees abutting them, but IRC has no specification on how to manage them.

We normally cut the sidewalk or make a depression to provide entry to the property and take a decision on trees on a case to case basis.

Other factors like curvature of a junction of roads and medians is not covered under IRC, Sreehari added.