20 potholes per km in Marathahalli
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Bengaluru: On an average, for every 1-kilometre stretch of the road, there 10-20 potholes in the city. Areas like Marathahalli Outer Ring Road, Marathahalli Junction, Service Roads starting from Eco Space, Kundanahalli Gate, Cunningham Road and Koramangala 80 Feet Road are the worst affected. The death of Stuti Tripathi Pandey, wife of techie Om Prakash, is not the first such incident in the city. There have been many such fatal accidents in the past, but the contractors who are supposed to maintain these roads on a regular basis have been let off without even a rap on their knuckles. Nobody knows what happened to the pothole filling vehicle that the BBMP purchased after shelling out crores of tax-payers’ money.
The Marathahalli Outer Ring Road and the service roads, which Deccan Chronicle team visited, are in a pathetic condition with hundreds of potholes on the stretch. Rajeev Kumar, an IT employee, said, “I have survived falls on these roads. The situation is scary, and anybody can become a victim.”
Mayur Jain, a businessman staying in Marathahalli, said, “I own a house in Marathahalli, but because of these potholed roads, I have taken a house on rent in Whitefield.” Arvind Keerti, a techie and a member of Whitefield Rising, said “It is time we took up long-term solutions. There should be a system to test the entire infrastructure. Poor execution of work and design flaws result in potholes. Besides, there is no provision for water to drain out and stagnant pools lead to potholes. The BBMP should look at these problems and fix them.”
Traffic expert M.N. Sreehari feels that the BBMP should be made criminally liable for accidents, like the one that killed Stuti. “There are potholes everywhere. What is stopping the authorities from fixing them?” But the BBMP maintained that the number of potholes has come down after it took up initiatives to fix them. The BBMP stated that on September 14, the number of potholes identified in the city was 29,210. Of these 25,981 were fixed and the remaining 3,229 were yet to be fixed. Around 67,309 sq metres of bad areas were identified, of which 52,075 sq metres were attended to and another 5,234 sq meters were yet to be fixed.
On Python, the pothole-filling machine, BBMP Commissioner Kumar Naik, said, “It is being used to fill potholes on major roads. As its speed is an issue, it is being used only for arterial roads.” Defending the work done by the BBMP in fixing potholes, he said, “We have tried to create a system to rectify these local issues. We are conducting weekly meetings on Mondays and chief engineers from all zones take part in video conferencing. At these meetings, we review the number of potholes fixed, new potholes appeared and so on. Initially, we started a survey and consolidated the number of potholes in each zone. I have released Rs 1 lakh for each ward every month to fix potholes. This means I have released almost Rs 2 crore every month. The number of potholes has come down considerably.”
As far liability of the contractors is concerned, he said, “The contractors are liable to maintain the roads and fix the potholes until their contractual obligation period is over. The engineer on duty is supposed to call them and ask them to fix potholes and if the contractors fail to do so then a penalty is levied on them. It will be deducted from the amount payable to them. If the liability period is over then it is the duty of the BBMP to fix the potholes.” Clearing the confusion on the jurisdiction of BDA and BBMP, he said, “We had a meeting with BDA and asked them to hand over all the roads to BBMP after building service roads and other infrastructure.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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