No more potholed promises?

No more potholed promises?
2,458 km of the pathetic city roads have been under harsh public glare. Even moderate rainfall damages roads. Cornered into a pothole, BCC engineer-in-chief P K Srihari says that it’s finally time to take preventive action.

Of the 250 km of arterial roads in the city, hardly 28 km can be classified as good. Why do we have such a pathetic situation?
The BCC had commissioned a study to some professors at the Bangalore University. This kind of analysis had not been attempted before, not in the last 50 years. That is why the results seem so revealing. Had we attempted this earlier we would not have been shocked. Roads in the city do need an overhaul and there are plans to execute them.

Whether the rainfall is 10 mm or 40 mm, roads are left badly battered. Isn’t the thickness of the asphalted layer monitored?
There is no excuse for this. The problem is, on most of roads the drainage system needs to be redone. We did not really concentrate on the drainage design earlier. For instance at Trinity Circle, there is a drain just five feet below. Cubbon Road has no drain. So periodically we have third party inspections given out to institutes like TRFI, Bangalore University. They check the thickness and quality of roads.

Is there a mechanism in place for road maintenance at all?
We wanted to outsource the task of regular maintenance to an agency, somehow that didn’t work out. To ensure that quality material is used we buy emulsion directly from the manufacturer and distribute it in the engineering department. As of today, the rain has not allowed us to show good results. We will increasingly move towards preventive maintenance rather than take corrective steps later.

Filling of potholes is apparently being done in earnest. But why do they surface less than a week after filling them?
During the rainy season we don’t get the hot mix required to fill up gaping holes. We get a cold mix and are forced to roll it on. We take good caution to fill up as and when they surface, yet probably due to vehicular density they come up again. Also take into consideration that other utility agencies keep digging roads under different pretexts.

In the DOCK
Name: P K Srihari
Age: 43
Designation: Engineer-inchief, BCC, additional commissioner (finance) BCC
Qualification: ME (Civil), Indian Institute of Science; B E (Civil), National Institute of Engineering.
Address: Bangalore City Corporation, N R Square, Bangalore — 560 002.
The IRS officer dons many hats at the BCC. Not forthcoming on his previous postings, he only talks about the previous tenure being in “the Ministry of finance, Government of India.’’ The last five years at the BCC have been largely peaceful for him, but all hell broke loose early this year when the spotlight focused on the condition of roads and the public looked accusingly at the engineering department.


VERDICT GUILTY
V Parthasarathy, 84. The senior citizen, fed up with civic inaction in his area, got potholes on his road filled up. He personally supervised the exercise and paid for it too. The point is, they have lot of ambitious plans. Everytime there is a problem they say, we have this grand plan or that committee in place. So what happened to all the committees set up so far? Besides, the chief engineer is supposed to be fully qualified and competent to handle any kind of problem. There is no excuse to the manner in which asphalting is done. The key lies in execution not in having plans which continue to be plans.