After being accused by commuters of causing traffic snarls, the civic administration has decided to temporarily suspend white-topping of roads. They will re-prioritise the road works and start only on roads which have alternate routes, officials claim.
Only the nine-kilometre stretch on Outer Ring Road and other areas, where work is underway, will be completed.
BBMP was all set to take up white-topping on another 32-km stretch on over 15 arterial roads in the coming weeks, which has now been temporarily dropped. The civic body was all set to begin work also on 26 busy junctions next week. That work also stands suspended for now.
The decision came after a meeting chaired by Bengaluru Development Minister K.J. George, who is a strong votary of the technology, on Sunday. White-topping is an overlay of Portland cement concrete layer over the existing asphalt layer on the road, known to be pothole resistant.
The city administration opted for this technology after the recent monsoon left the roads riddled with potholes, drawing much ire from commuters. In October, the BBMP cleared the biggest white-topping project in the city – 29 roads totalling to a length of 93.47 km at a cost of ₹723.71 crore.
The project was high on the priority list of the ruling Congress to present a pothole-free city in the runup to the upcoming Assembly polls.
However, as BBMP started implementing the project, commuters opposed the move citing the huge traffic chaos it was causing. The traffic police had repeatedly told the BBMP to speed up work on one hand and also advised them to take up work in a phased manner.
BBMP Commissioner N. Manjunath Prasad said that while work on ORR and other major arterial roads will be put on hold for now, the white-topping project will not be scrapped. “We will reprioritise the work orders in consultation with traffic police and start work only on roads where alternate routes are available,” he said.
The new list of roads where the civic body will take up white-topping will be out in two weeks, he said.
Mayor Sampath Raj accepted part of the blame for the opposition from commuters. “Students and office-goers have been hard pressed to reach their destinations as there have been traffic pile-ups extending several kilometres. We have temporarily suspended work. We will consult traffic police before resuming the work,” he said.
For instance, white-topping on the Banaswadi stretch on ORR shouldn’t have been taken up at all. There are two under-pass works underway on either side, which has locked down the traffic, he said.
On a multi-lane road, BBMP has closed down lanes on one direction to carry out white-topping while allowing two-way traffic on the opposite lanes.
BBMP will not even complete white-topping on the 9-km stretch where work is underway. “We will only finish the work on the lanes where work is ongoing. On the opposite lanes, we will lay a new asphalt layer,” the mayor said.
Published - December 25, 2017 08:57 pm IST
