The recent rain not only exposed how woefully unprepared the city is for the oncoming monsoon, it also forced the civic body to bring changes in the design for TenderSURE roads as they were left flooded.
All the three roads where TenderSURE work has been completed — Cunnigham Road, St. Mark’s Road and Vittal Mallya Road — were flooded during the rain on May 19. Flooding is now being blamed on the “improper draining system” on these roads.
While there has been suggestion to introduce box-type shoulder drain along these roads, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) officials acknowledge that the cylindrical drains — the norm across the world — which has been part of TenderSure roads, are better equipped for the velocity of the water flow. However, with the water run-off taking too long to drain, officials are now making minor changes in the draining system on these roads.
BBMP officials have now zeroed in on the issue of gratings on the pavements to drain water. “There are only vertical gratings at every 30 metres on the pavement, with a height of 5 cm. This is what is causing a delay in draining water. The height of the kerb is 6 inches, to which we now plan to increase the height of the grating to, along with increasing its length,” said Basavaraj Khabade of Traffic Engineering Cell, BBMP.
BBMP officials have increased the height of the grating to 6 inches on the pavements of Vittal Mallya Road on Saturday night. Mr. Khabade said they were considering introducing horizontal grating on these stretches. He added that these changes would be made on all three roads in the coming week.
Officials are seeing this as a trial-and-error method in the project. “If increasing the grating height doesn’t solve the flooding problem, the diameter of the cylindrical drain (60 cm) has to be increased to 80 or 90 cm in these stretches,” said a senior official.
These changes will be incorporated in all the four road stretches where the work is under way, and lessons learnt from them will be taken as an input for the TenderSURE design for the next batch of 25 roads to be taken up shortly.
