Cochin Smart Mission Limited (CSML) has decided to redesign drains in road work that it will undertake (both smart and others). The decision comes in the wake of reports of pedestrians getting entrapped in pipe drains that the agency built in road corridors developed recently.
There were widespread complaints about how pedestrians, especially children, are prone to sustain injuries if their feet get entrapped in the six-inch-wide pipe drains built parallel to the road. Two women sustained injuries, with one of them suffering fracture, after their feet got trapped in the drains during the past month on Abraham Madamakkal Road and Park Avenue Road, which CSML had renovated earlier this year as smart roads.
Sources in CSML said work was under way to cover the pipe drains with gratings and to affix them with the help of concrete, wherever road work got over. Work is nearing completion on Abraham Madamakkal Road and Shanmugham Road, while it will shortly commence on Park Avenue Road, all smart roads. Accidents involving pedestrians could have occurred, since members of the public removed gratings to enable faster draining of water when the roads got inundated in recent rains, sources claimed.
New design
In addition, the entry to drains on roads that are being developed will henceforth be built facing the side channels, rather than on the road shoulder, they added. It will be tried out on Banerji Road, where smart road work is nearing completion.
Entry to drains were hitherto provided every 50 metres. This will be readied in closer proximity, since many drains are choked with plastic and waste from hotels and eateries. “The Kochi Corporation ought to prevent indiscriminate dumping of such waste in drains while also frequently declogging them,” the sources said. CSML claimed that it widened the drains on Banerji Road keeping this in mind.
“Mechanised cleaning of drains is the best option, since all slabs need not be removed. Modern methods like vacuum-cum-suction cleaning are needed to ensure that rainwater drains off fast. We pressure-cleaned drains on roads that were handed over to us for renovation, during the past two years,” the sources added.
On MG Road, drains that were rebuilt as part of the Kochi metro work are pumping back water into other drains owing to improper gradient, it is learnt.
CSML is, in the meantime, readying to earmark ‘drop off’ zones beside pavements to prevent buses, cars, and other vehicles halting at will on roads, and thus holding up other vehicles.
The upgradation work on roads and footpaths on Banerji Road is in its last leg. The Electrical Inspectorate had recently issued instructions to CSML to alter a few electrical installations on the road. This and a few road upgradation works in West Kochi are expected to get over in a month, sources said.
