City roads turning death-traps

Prathima Nandakumar / TNN / Oct 9, 2005, 02:45 IST

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Riding on city roads is no joke and one must consider oneself lucky if not sucked into one of the crumbling roads.

VADODARA: A speeding truck on the Shastri bridge in Vadodara jolts to a halt in the middle of the road sending an entire convoy of vehicles bumping into each other. For once, no one blames the truck driver. Instead, they curse the civic authorities as one of the wheels is stuck in a crevice caused due to caving in of the road.
Riding on city roads is no joke and one must consider oneself lucky if not sucked into one of the crumbling roads.Not potholes, but giant craters on the arterial roads have terrified the motorists out of their wits. Reason: Most incidents of caving in of the roads strike unsuspecting victims even as they are trying to speed off on the main road.
Last month, at least five instances of roads caving in were reported from Baroda Productivity Road, while a huge crater on Tarsali Road became a crowd-puller. The list of pathetic roads includes almost every stretch in the city from posh RC Dutt Road, GEB Road, Akota, Jetalpur Road, Raopura to Sussen-Tarsali Road.
Citizens have been crying foul over the poor quality of roads. The roads cave-in as there has been no proper planning and technique. "Potholed roads, trenches dug up by various Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) departments and the recent phenomenon of caving in even on the main roads has made commuting very risky.

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It only reflects on the poor quality of work," said social worker Kanu Brahmbhatt. "Gravel instead of loose soil would have been enough to fill up the craters. Dumping mud will only make the road slushy. Businesses get affected as the road is in a constant state of mess," said provision store owner Narendra Patel.
The VMC officials claim that the caving in is because of the collapse of 50-year-old drainage trunk line along the BPC Road. "We have suggested a new passage for the drainage after declaring the present BPC drainage trunk line defunct. The new line would be laid via Akota towards Akota village, Taj Hotel, Samrajya towards Munj Mohuda," said a VMC official.

Oversight of the contractors and engineers handling the road projects might lead to poor quality work. Roads cave-in as the layers of mud beneath the bitumen collapse, warn experts. "Usually, we dig up eightfoot-deep pits to lay the pipelines.
If we don't fill up the trench with the same volume of mud that was extracted, there is always a possibility of the road caving in as the layers beneath get compressed. An option is to wet the mud before refilling the trench as it can accommodate higher volume of mud.
However, roads with crevices will eventually develop craters as water seeps into the layers and loosens the soil," said VMC engineer Harish Prajapati. However, there is still hope. The General Board of VMC has announced an ambitious plan for road development and also earmarked Rs 25 crore for the purpose.
Standing committee chairman Ajit Patel said, "The city will get new roads while the old roads will be resurfaced and patched by December 2005. We have earmarked at least Rs 25 crore for the roads project. This includes resurfacing of 40 main roads and within two months we hope to complete 70 per cent of road repair and maintenance work."

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