Hyderabad: With temperatures soaring past 42 degree Celsius in Hyderabad, several stretches of city's roads have developed fissures, raising fears of a situation similar to that in Delhi in May last year, when road surface melted at various places due to heat wave conditions.
Top layer of the road at James Street, Begumpet main road, and roads at Neredmet, Malkajgiri, and Tobacco Bazaar have already withered away. With some of the city roads being already battered by the ongoing metro rail works, the heat has only made matters worse for motorists and pedestrians alike.
W G Prasanna Kumar, professor of Climate Change at Marri Chenna Reddy Institute of Human Resource Development, said the situation could worsen due to poor quality of Hyderabad roads. "When the Delhi incident happened, the recorded temperature was around 45 degree Celsius. There are high chances of similar instances happening in Hyderabad as well," he said.
"The friction caused by tyres on the roads generates excessive heat. This coupled with the heat wave conditions pushes bitumen to a softening point, which happens around 49 degree Celsius," said A C Reddy, head of mechanical engineering, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University Hyderabad (JNTUH).
Sources within Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) confessed that road works are mostly entrusted to contractors who often use sub-standard bitumen mixes. "If the GHMC is using a substandard mix, there are chances that the roads might develop fissures and cracks, leaving them unusable," Prof K M Lakshmana Rao, an expert of transportation engineering at JNTUH, told TOI.