Bengaluru's TenderSURE roads cost Rs 15 crore km, but are they worth it?

BENGALURU: When the

local government

spends nearly Rs 180 crore on building 11.67 km of roads, questions arise about their resilience, lifespan and quality.

Road and transport experts say that as per the government reports, a normal two-lane city road with a total width of 7.5 metres would cost Rs 2.25 crore per kilometre. As per the national highways standards, it would cost Rs3-4 crore per km.

However, details provided by Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) reveal that the civic body has spent Rs 15crore per km on an average on these nine TenderSURE roads, or Rs 5-8crore per lane per kilometre if the roads are considered to be three-lane thoroughfares. The width of the roads is not uniform along the stretches and varies from two to four lanes.

Responding to questions about citizens' complaints against waterlogging on TenderSURE roads during the recent showers, and poor maintenance of footpaths, K T Nagaraj, chief engineer for projects and in charge of the TenderSURE project said, “Surface water has to flow into a single grate and takes some time. There is never waterlogging, it's just that it takes up to one hour to drain out. The grates are located 30-40metres from each other.This year, the intensity of rain was much higher and water filled up the whole road and receded slowly.“

Nagaraj conceded that the only obstruction could be dry leaves stuck near drain openings which are cleaned regularly.

“Since the work is recent, these roads will not have any major problems for the next five years,“ he said, adding that the percolation and runoff rates had been reversed 10 years ago resulting in 85% runoff and 15% percolation, resulting in more water inflow into drains.

One of the major advantages of TenderSURE roads is that all public utilities are being moved to occupy the duct under the footpath to prevent road cutting.

Despite this, Richmond, Cunningham and Residency Roads were dug up to shift sewage lines earlier this year, as they were still functioning along an old sewer network. Footpaths along these roads are also found to have been dug up and are not always in a good condition. Nagaraj said that large rodents, seen commonly on city roads, were also behind some of the damage as they enter drains through openings from adjacent buildings. “There is a wrong notion that TenderSURE is the responsibility of only the BBMP. We are the executioners but we need cooperation from all agencies. We have a meeting every 15 days with Bescom, KPTCL and BWSSB for this purpose. It is our agency that performs the work with inputs and requirements coming in from the agencies. It is challenging to do all this in a constrained space,“ he said.

All TenderSURE roads have bus bays, on-road parking facilities, LED streetlights, interlocking cobblestone footpaths and inspection chambers for all utilities. There is a defect liability period of two years and maintenance period of three years.

While work has been completed on nine of the roads, under the second phase work is ongoing on

Modi Hospital Road

,

Siddaiah Puranik Road and Jayanagar

11th Main. Work on other allocated routes around Gandhinagar have been severely delayed. While work was supposed to start in 2016, the routes have been submitted for tender approval only in May this year.