ROAD RAGE

ROAD RAGE
Everybody’s angry about the state of affairs
TIMES NEWS NETWORK


Residents of Church Street have probably not seen roads being tarred for years. Travelling on the narrow stretch is a nightmare, particularly when it rains. The road is full of worn-out patches, potholes and craters. “Why doesn’t the BBMP asphalt our road when it repairs the adjacent roads? For years together, we have not seen a smooth road surface in our colony,’’ rued the residents.
In Bangalore, it’s a given — that roads constructed by the BBMP do not last beyond the first spell of rain! Year after year, not less than Rs 300 crore is spent on road asphalting, construction of new roads and maintenance. But except for a few stretches where quality work is on display, roads in Bangalore are, by and large, always in a deplorable state.
What ails the city roads? Lack of proper planning, shoddy construction with inferior quality; official apathy and bad selection of contractors. Even after forming technical committees to look into roads and assess their quality, the report seems to be gathering dust in cupboards.
Bangalore weeps when it
pours. The city is inundated; roads open up, potholes are created and the strength of the roads weaken. According to road experts, several reasons contribute to the present condition of roads — water logging, heavy traffic movement, oil and fuel leakage, frequent road digging and low quality work carried out by contractors. As per the Indian Road Congress (IRC), roads have to be resurfaced (asphalted) once in three to five years if the road is built as per specified standards .
The IRC norms specify that a normal road has to comprise four layers — the base layer with a gravel sub-base which is minimum of 1 foot thickness; then is the mettling with either water-bound macadam or wet mix macadam which should be 23 cms thick. The third layer is of bituminous macadam which is 50-75 mm thick. The fourth and the top layer is a protective tier which is called mix seal. It has be 25 mm in thickness.
A road with this specification costs Rs 50 lakh to Rs 60 lakh per km for 3.5 metre carriageway and Rs 1 crore per km for 7 metre carriageway.
However, these standards are hardly maintained by the contractors. “The finance crunch in the BBMP is also a major factor for the compromise in quality of work. Instead of laying the four required layers, work is completed by laying just two layers and such roads don’t last long,” experts explained.
The bad drain network in the city adds to the problems as water is logged on the road; the diesel and oil leak from old vehicles such as tippers and autorickshaws damage the road surface. Frequent digging further lowers the lifespan and the road sinks as the agencies do a shoddy work of road restoration.
The city has a road network of 3,800 kms of which nearly 500 kms are arterial roads. In every budget, BBMP spends on laying blacktop, maintenance and road repairs, redoing of cut portions, formation, widening and metalling of zonal roads, asphalting of zonal roads, arterial and sub-arterial roads.
After the BBMP took over
the urban local bodies around it, Greater Bangalore has posed a bigger challenge to BBMP as roads in the old CMCs and TMCs are nothing but stretches of mud and stones. According to experts, if Bangalore’s roads have to be better, it needs nothing less than a capital investment of Rs 4,000 crore and annual maintenance cost of Rs 2,000 crore. Considering that the BBMP’s annual budget outlay does not even reach Rs 4,000 crore, road construction work looks like a herculean task.
In the next few days, when Bangalore faces the full fury of the monsoon, the city roads will turn into death traps — with motorists negotiating water-filled potholes or slushy craters and flooded stretches.
While BBMP has commenced asphalting work across the city, one wonders whether the roads will last beyond this monsoon!
toiblr.reporter@timesgroup.com