Making use of the days without rain, the Chennai Corporation undertook patch work on many rain-battered roads.
As on Thursday, nearly 250 potholes were mended with cement concrete in Zone 9 (Teynampet), which covers areas such as Alwarpet, Mylapore, Triplicane, Santhome and Nungambakkam.
“There are 1, 724 interior roads in the zone and 114 Bus Route Roads. In the last few weeks, the city got 40 cm of rainfall and we received 50 to 60 complaints, a majority of which were related to potholes. We are attending to these complaints,” said a senior official of the zone.
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Pattanipakkam, R.K. Mutt Road, P.S. Sivaswami Salai, Gopalpuram and Whites Road are among the roads that have been badly battered by the rains.
Also, unlike the traditional method of using bitumen to level potholes during the monsoon, the Corporation has come up with cold mix asphalt concrete which is durable.
According to officials, the cold mix concrete is a mixture of asphalt and soap in water. Each pack of the mix weighs around 50 kg.
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“Now, we can fix the potholes within an hour whereas concrete cement would take at least eight to ten hours,” said an official.
No re-laying of roads will be done during the monsoon but engineers are asked to create a data of roads that will need such work.
“In zone 9, nearly 65 interior roads in 18 divisions will be re-laid after the monsoon. These roads have not been black-topped for some years and were damaged in the rains,” said an official.
Meanwhile, the Corporation is asking residents to send them pictures of pothole-ridden roads for the department to take action. Perhaps, for the first time, it has a section on www.chennaicorporation.gov.in titled ‘potholes’ that gives information about the number of roads in each zone, potholes identified in the zone and the status of work on them.
While the Corporation seems to be doing its best to attend to grievances, it is mixed reaction from residents.
“Water logging was comparatively less at School View Road, R.K. Nagar but I am disappointed with the shoddy work done on jellis in and around my area. They are not placed well and a newcomer to the area would be trapped driving a two-wheeler in the rains,” says Sekaran Raman, a resident of the area.