“How long does it take the Greater Chennai Corporation to fix a pothole?”
This is among the questions relating to potholes that The Hindu Downtown put to officials in a few zones of the Greater Chennai Corporation, and here are the responses.
A few said that they attended to such complaints on a daily basis, and a few others that it would take even take 10 days to attend to the problem.
Officials of Zone VII (Ambattur), Zone XI (Valsarvakkam) and Zone VIII (Anna Nagar) said that complaints would usually start pouring in during the monsoon. And they said they would use bituminous cold mix to fix the patch.
Zone X officials said that attending to pothole-related complaints would take anywhere between a minimum of working days and a maximum of seven days. All the minor patchworks to be carried out on the road were overseen by executive engineers. In case the damage was huge, they would request those undertaking a major road work in some other area to carry out the repairs.
At Zone XV (Shollinganallur), when a quick-fix solution is required, quarry dust is used to fill the potholes.
At Zone XI (Valsarvakkam), bituminous cold mix is used only in case of an emergency, mainly during the monsoon. “The junior engineer in a division decides if the pothole is affecting vehicular traffic and based on his report, a patchwork will be done,” says an official .
According to a Corporation website, patches and potholes resulting from road cuts made by service departments and due to inundation during the rainy season are taken care immediately by using a bituminous hot mix.
All the necessary mixes were supposed to be prepared in Corporation-owned Central Asphalt Plant at Chetpet. Zonal officer of Zone 3 clarifies that the plant was shut at least three years ago and every division is required to find its own alternative.
“As Madhavaram was added to the Chennai Corporation much later, most roads were laid recently, and so there aren’t any major problems with them. Hot mix asphalt repair was a good solution to fix potholes but it is sad that the Corporation closed it down. When it was functioning, the mix was supplied from the Plant to every zone. Now, we even use concrete mix to cover a patch. Cold asphalt is costly and we use it only in an emergency situation. If a large portion of a road requires repair, tenders have to be issued for a contractor to take up the work, and this this is a long process,” said the official.
