Road work after rains

Road work after rains
The city’s roads will get in shape with this project
The Times of India

The Bangalore City Corporation (BCC) will take up strengthening, asphalting and pothole filling of major roads in the city after the monsoon. Around Rs 100 crores will be spent for this purpose and the World Bank will fund the work.

Sources in the BCC said, apart from strengthening, asphalting and pothole filling works, the project also includes improvement to shoulder drains, pavements, upgradation of signals and improvements to street lighting, providing bus b ay s, street furniture, barricading, and landscaping. The major arterial roads in the city need regular strengthening as they carry heavy traffic. Just asphalting will not suffice. The three packages of road work covering all the wards under east, west and south zone will be taken up. This time around we have warned the contractors that no time extension will be given and our engineers through regular inspection and monitoring will see the work through, say sources. The World Bank officials who had met them had proposed to fund the projects.

The city has a road network of 3,800 km, of which nearly 500 km are arterial roads. The BCC had taken up strengthening of 130 arterial roads running upto 270 km under the Municipal Bond Scheme at a cost of Rs 231 crores. After the Municipal Bond works, these roads have not been asphalted and hence we have decided to take up their strengthening, the sources say.

This apart, the BCC has taken up asphalting of 1,000 km of sub-arterial roads at a cost of Rs 106 crores. Of this, 496 km in 27 new areas are kachha roads and 504 km are e x i s t i n g roads. Apart from the roads in its jurisdiction, the BCC has also proposed to take up works on the major roads coming into the city that fall under the CMC jurisdictions.

It may be recalled here that Bescom and BSNL had dug up roads and footpaths to lay telephone cables, OFCs and UG power cables. However, the Karnataka Land Army Corporation Ltd (KLACL) is carrying out relaying of footpaths at a cost of Rs 7 lakhs per km on behalf of Bescom. After the monsoon and relaying of footpaths the road works will start.