Potholes, black-topping of roads, poor quality of construction, lack of coordination between civic agencies and corrupt contractors were some of the issues raised by readers on Saturday during a web chat with Ashwin Mahesh, urban development expert; Ashish Verma, professor, Civil Engineering, and R.K. Misra, member, Technical Advisory Committee, BBMP.
Mr. Mahesh said that there are two ways of looking at the pothole problem: the first is to ask, why do they crop up? And the second, how should we respond? “On the input side, the problem is due to poor engineering and corruption. On the response side, the problem is due to poor conceptualisation and finance,” he said.
Blaming poor quality of construction and re-surfacing, Mr. Verma said, “The issue gets compounded due to chocked storm-water drains. The continuous contact of road surface with water due to water-logging, particularly during the rainy season, reduces the binding of the aggregates and results in potholes.”
On potholes being spotted on TenderSURE roads, Mr. Mahesh said, “In TenderSURE, only the footpaths were redone. Roads were merely topped up.”
‘Mumbai, Mangaluru have solved the problem’“Concretising roads can help counter the problem,” Mr. Misra said. He proposed white-topping of some roads, such as between Hudson Circle and Kasturba Road. That will take care of potholes for good. Progressively, all major roads should go for concreting or white-topping. “Mumbai did it 10-15 years ago and so did Mangaluru.”
The panellists agreed that a strict and independent quality control mechanism is probably the best way to ensure good roads. Also, they proposed putting in place mechanisms for penalty and punishment for the engineers concerned.
