HYDERABAD: Bad roads have come to haunt again. Flying dust, loose gravel and peeling tar greet one everywhere. Motorists have a testing time negotiating craters, which have appeared overnight. The recent downpours have taken a heavy toll of roads in the city. Name any road, and it shows signs of wear and tear. Stagnant water on road edges only adds to the plight of users.
Of course, it is an annual affair – monsoon and bad roads. But this time even though the monsoon is not so active, the roads have taken a beating. The recent cloudburst seems to have done most damage. Interior roads have also borne the brunt of heavy showers. One can still find stagnant pools of water all over.
Even as they give a bumpy ride, the battered roads expose the quality of work executed by the civic body. In the last two days, GHMC workers have been busy putting bitumen tar to fill craters. But the patchwork comes unstuck the next day, with loose gravel giving a tough time to users.
Be it lanes or bylanes, the situation remains the same. From core areas in the city to those on the fringes, pothole-riddled roads greet motorists. While motorists have to exhibit their driving skills in manoeuvring potholes on Erragadda road, similar is the case on Krishnanagar road.
At Musheerabad and RTC crossroads in the heart of the city, motorists jostle up and down driving vehicles amid yawning potholes, scattered gravel and dusty roads. The plight of road users in the Secunderabad Cantonment Board (SCB) area is even worse as vehicle get stuck in potholes and slushy roads near Polo Grounds and the stretch leading to Sikh Village crossroads. Repair work at Picket and JBS-West Marredpally- Balamrai stretches are pending.
In Old City, vehicle owners are forced to negotiate through potholes on stretches at Tadban, Kishanbagh, Hafeezbaba Nagar, Vattepally, Misrigunj, Puranapul and Errakunta road. It is no better at Golconda and Langer Houz.
The road in front of KIMS, too, is badly hit, and road digging on the stretch causes slow-down in traffic movement, commuters allege. “The whole stretch in front of the hospital is ridden with potholes, resulting in a bumpy ride all the time,” complains M. Srinivas, an educational consultant.
Road dug up and not properly re-carpeted is the problem at Chaitanyapuri near Dilsukhnagar. Here, power utilities have dug up the road for laying underground cables, but have left the road patchy after the work.
One more bad patch can be found on the road in Lakdikapul opposite Telephone Bhavan.
(With inputs from J.S. Iftekhar, M. Sai Gopal, Swathi V., S. Sandeep Kumar and Asif Yar Khan)
