It is often a bitter pill to swallow when a heritage-rich city has to choose modernisation over conservation.
The paver block roads that have defined the tree-lined streetscapes and Gallic ambience within the Boulevard area are slowly giving way to bitumen.
The poor maintenance of the interlinked paver blocks had reduced several streets, including portions of Rue Suffren, to such a battered state that the PWD had launched a major road restoration effort last year — in the trade off modern bitumen would replace the traditional paver block roads.
On Monday, the Chief Minister launched the Phase-II of the PWD road restoration project at the intersection of S.V. Patel Salai and Francis Martin Street near the Old Distillery.
The Phase-I, which covered parts of the Boulevard, had focused on relaying roads on the uneven stretches and replacing the 35-year-old obsolete water supply system with a modern grid.
“These works are mostly complete and covered a net road length of about 27 kilometres,” a PWD spokesman said.
Phase-II, involving a HUDCO loan assistance of Rs. 1.59 crore, will take up the replacement of 5.3 kms length of paver blocks with bitumen macadam.
The larger plan for the city is to renovate 18 major roads such as the Mahatma Gandhi Road, Jawaharlal Nehru Street, Ambour Salai, Gingee Salai, Mission Street, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Salai, Romain Rolland Street and Lal Bahadur Shastri Street (Bussy Street). “Ideally, we would have liked paver block roads to define this area but the problem has been that they were so poorly maintained. Smooth bitumen surface is better than having unmotorable roads that many stretches have turned into,” said Ashok Pande, co-convener, INTACH.
PWD officials state that opting for bitumen roads was also done with an eye on the future and for hassle-free maintenance.
“Moreover, the paver block roads have been laid in an interlinked pattern so we can’t just replace one bad section; rather entire grids would have to be re-laid making it impractical,” an official said.
Under the PWD plan, it is proposed to lay a 5 cm thick layer of bitumen macadam followed by a 2.5 cm spread of a type of reinforced concrete.
The beautification of the Boulevard zone is also the centrepiece of a plan pursued by the Tourism Department and INTACH which involves holistic restoration of the heritage area stretching from the south Boulevard to Bharathi Park.
The initiative involves restoration of three streets, including Dumas Street and Romain Rolland Street, as model heritage streets, facelift for the buildings, roads, pavements and lighting improvements.
