The unique selling point of TenderSURE roads has always been that the roads need not be dug up for years to come as all service utilities have been shifted below the footpath. However, of late, these roads have been repeatedly dug up to fix service utilities, implying that all of them were in fact not moved out.
On most roads with this problem, the sewer lines of Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) seem to be the culprit. On Richmond Road, Residency Road and Cunningham Road, sewer lines still run under the carriageway. All three roads have been dug up to clear clogged drains more than once. Even today, Richmond Road has over six manholes on the carriageway that make the ride a bumpy one.
These three roads have two kinds of sewer lines: a local sewer line connecting individual households and a trunk line that runs through the road, linking it to the larger sewer network in the area. The BWSSB has expressed its inability to shift the trunk lines as not only will the exercise be costly, but also because other parts of the same network are under the carriageway. This means that whenever the trunk line is clogged, the road has to be dug up, snatching away TenderSURE’s immunity of road cutting.
However, TenderSURE work has laid down parallel local sewer lines connecting all households and establishments, under the footpath. “But the BWSSB has still not shifted to the new sewer lines and kept the old local sewer network below the carriageway active. Despite several follow ups with the agency, the work is slow,” said Ganesh Shetty of NPAC, the firm that carried out the first phase. Recently, a portion of Cunningham Road was dug up for the same purpose and now three new manholes are being built to run a parallel line.
N. Satish, additional chief engineer, BWSSB, in-charge TenderSURE, said that they were in the process of shifting all households to new sewer lines and this would be completed at the earliest. “We are presently doing a portion of Richmond Road and will soon take up other roads as well,” he said. However, he said the trunk lines would remain.
- Flooding on TenderSURE roads : Cunningham Road, St. Marks Road, Hayes Road – Residency Road junction.
- Sewer trunk lines under carriageway : Richmond Road, Residency Road and Cunningham Road
- Power line under carriageway : St Marks Road
- TenderSURE Phase II : Nrupatunga Road, K.G. Road, Modi Hospital Road and Shankarmutt Road, Jayanagar 11th Main.
It’s not just sewer lines, a KPTCL power line runs below the carriageway of St. Mark’s Road. The 220KV power line was not shifted out as Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited (KPTCL) has said that shifting it out was not feasible and provided assurance that the line rarely developed snags. However, soon after the road work was completed, the power line, the only alternative power supply to Vidhana Soudha, developed a snag and the junction was dug up. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) officials confirmed that in future too, any snag in the 220 KV line can be fixed only by digging up the junction.
Bad sweeping practices main cause for roads getting flooded
Multiple TenderSURE roads have witnessed flooding during the recent rains. Cunningham Road, St. Marks Road and Hayes Road – Residency Road junction, have reported flooding numerous times.
Basavaraj Kabade, executive engineer, BBMP in-charge of TenderSURE roads, said that flooding had more to do with bad road sweeping practices than with road geometry or gradient. “Our sweepers tend to push all the dust, leaves and other waste on the road against the gratings put up to let water into the drain. This is what clogs the drains, we have realised. Once these drains are cleaned, water logging is solved. We are thinking of a separate sweeping contract for tender sure roads,” he said.
However, what has left many surprised is the caving in of footpaths. This created a very uneven pedestrian experience. Portions of the footpath on Cunningham Road and Richmond Road that had caved in, have now been remade. A senior BBMP official blamed the phenomenon on the difficulty in compacting the soil owing to the service ducts below.
