The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike’s (BBMP) road history project, a ‘mother document’ on all roads in the city, is making tardy progress.
It was nearly three years ago when the BBMP proposed to create road history by mapping all roads in the city through Geographical Information System (GIS). Yet, the civic body has been able to validate and update details of only 10,000 of the 93,135 roads in the city.
According to sources, the BBMP has mapped 93,135 roads measuring an approximate 13,000 km.
Each road has been given a unique number and classified as arterial and sub-arterial, inter-ward roads (those passing through two or more wards) and inter-wards (roads within a ward).
The idea was to validate the ids and include all details of the roads, such as condition of road and pavement, when it was last asphalted, and number of streetlights and hoardings.
However, BBMP engineers have been able to validate only 10,000 road ids so far. The progress on updating all the road details is slow though a circular was issued by the Engineer-in-Chief in June 2013 directing officials to approve projects, give technical clearance and clear bills of contractors only after verifying the road history.
“Roughly, each ward has around 500 road IDs. It is not tough to validate. The main reason for this is the reluctance on part of officials,” a source said, and added that the BBMP Commissioner had directed officials to update all details by August-end.
With complete road history in place, the civic body can prevent duplication of work and double billing for the same project, for which it has gained notoriety.
The source added that once completed, road history could be shared with the other civic agencies for better coordination and would also be made available in the public domain.
