WHY DOESN’T THE LEFT HAND KNOW WHAT THE RIGHT HAND IS DOING?

WHY DOESN’T THE LEFT HAND KNOW WHAT THE RIGHT HAND IS DOING?
Only days after a road has been repaired or laid afresh, it is dug up again by another public agency. Is this plain indifference or lack of coordination?
Times City
brings you the ugly picture Everyone works in a vacuum
TIMES NEWS NETWORK


Afew months ago, when the BBMP announced that a magic box underpass would be constructed in 72 hours at Cauvery Junction, there were, quite understandably, gasps of disbelief.
The precast box was brought to the site for installation. When it was time to set the boxes by excavating the ground, the 72-hour time window opened. That’s when the entire plan came unstuck. The corridor had 17 main water lines and four sanitary lines which needed a minimum of one to three months to shift. These were the utility lines that catered to nearly 1.25 lakh connections in the High Grounds and Hebbal areas.
Only after the BBMP started excavating the ground did it realize that the main utility lines had to be shifted — a laborious exercise. The underpass was completed only after a month. It’s quite the classic case of a lack of coordination between civic agencies when it comes to road work.
Sadly, civic agencies work independent of each other. The BBMP constructs/ repairs roads, but only after a few days, the BWSSB digs it up to either lay a new pipeline or fix a leaking line. The same saga with road cutting. The freshly coated bitumen surface is cut away in a frenzy. Why? Because either the telecom providers or the power company needs to lay its lines! Why didn’t these agencies submit their plans to BBMP before the road was taken up for relaying?
Some time ago, BBMP made tall claims about installing ducts on pavements to curb road digging and ensuring that all service providers use this channel to run their lines. But the ducting system worked out to be hugely expensive and unviable. So, the age-old road digging is still practised.
“Potholes are formed because of water leakage and unless the BWSSB sets that right, we cannot go ahead to rectify the problem. Only the BBMP gets blamed for bad roads and other agencies get away with it,’’ complain BBMP engineers.
All civic agencies were supposed to use a web-based approval system. “A transparent way to make all road cutting permissions through the internet was proposed. But it didn’t take off. It is a good system where all service providers can see online which road is being cut and make their plans accordingly,’’ pointed out BSNL officials.



READER REPORTER: Deepjyoti Kakati sent this picture of a road at S T Bed Layout in Koramangala, off 80 Feet Road. He says roads here have always been bad. Over the last few months, however, frenzied cable-laying, pipelaying and drain-building works made it worse, with no thought given to repairing them thereafter. Send your photos of bad roads to: toiblr.reporter@timesgroup.com with ‘Bad Road’ in the subject line