Come rains, roads vanish

Come rains, roads vanish
Saturday December 22 2007 10:01 IST


It just took two days of drizzle to make the metro roads virtually unmotorable. Many linking and peripheral roads have made life miserable for pedestrians and motorists.

BANGALORE: One should take a dekko at the inner roads, a little away from the core city, to know the real condition of the roads after a few rains.

While the general situation is pathetic, one could take a particular note of bylane roads abutting Kodigehalli Main Road. Indeed, it's a hard task looking for the tell-tale signs of the road among the craters and potholes and waste dumps. When it rains, the roads here resemble something of a battle ground with overflowing drainage and rainwater washing dirt, slush and pebbles on to the road.

But, the residents and shop owners here are least surprised. ``The condition of the roads here has been very bad for a long time,'' says Narayanaswami, a shopkeeper in Virupaksha Nagar near Kodigehalli main road.

It's not the road's physical appearance that has gone from bad to worse. The vehicular traffic has increased manifold. `` The traffic has increased by leaps and bounds in the past two years,'' says Manjula, a resident of Kodigehalli. However, they all point an accusing finger at the criminal negligence of the authorities which allow all sorts of agencies to dig up roads and leave them unmended.

The woes of the residents have run overfull. ``The roads are very bad after rains. No mending, no repairing,'' regrets Nagaraj who works in ITC company Marketing section.

Obviously, the bad roads have affected the business in the area and shopkeepers are complaining about the difficulties being faced by their customers. ``There is no place to park vehicles and they cannot even park them along the road. This has really affecting our business,'' said Piyoos, a shopkeeper of Sahakarnagar. Sahakarnagar resident Muttayamma said people in the area are not coming forward to register their complaints with the authorities, who are also not doing anything on their own.

Some of them did try to approach the authorities at the BBMP headquarters, but they were directed to meet the civic officials in their respective areas,'' she said.

If that was the condition of roads in Kodegalli, people residing in many areas off Old Madras Road and NGEF Road are not different.``It has been like this for a pretty long time, a year or more,'' says Narandra Kumar, a shopkeeper. He says the bad roads are contributing to frequent traffic snarls and consequent loss of precious working hours.