Nagpur: As city’s potholes grow in size, their repair cost too goes up

NAGPUR: A study by Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT) has revealed that neglected potholes have cost the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) dear with the expenditure for repairs increasing manifold.
After the VNIT’s civil engineering department adopted a stretch of Hingna road for a year, a small pothole appeared in December 2016. If the NMC had repaired the pothole right away then the expenditure per sqm would have been in the region of Rs500-Rs700.
While the NMC failed to wake up from its deep slumber, the size of the pothole increased by February 2017.
However, three months later, in June 2017, the pothole became bigger and deeper and needed immediate repairs. The cost of repairs increased to Rs1,200—1,750 per sqm.
As the civic body continued to turn a blind eye, the small pothole turned into a huge crater by July 2017. This lackadaisical attitude proved costly for the civic body as now, it needs to relay the entire stretch at a cost of Rs50 lakh per km, the VNIT study revealed.
“It’s just the tip of the iceberg. With the city’s road network approximately 2,700km, the NMC needs to come up with a comprehensive road asset management system which can save wasteful expenditure worth crores of rupees,” said V Landge, head of VNIT’s civil engineering department.
The Central India’s premier institute has also submitted its study — carried out by Landge, Parag Deshpande, Udit Jain, Vivek Hokam and Abhay Tawlare — to the civic body.
“We have submitted a proposal to the NMC to launch the Nagpur road asset management system (N-RAMS) which will be a smart step for a smart city. Our service charges per annum would be Rs2 crore,” said Landge.
According to VNIT’s proposal, data collection will be done by traffic volunteers. They will use a mobile app to record details of faulty roads. VNIT has offered to develop the road severity index to help prioritize rehabilitation and also to strategize repair work within the limited budget.
The NMC has insufficient manpower to handle the city’s road network. The other concern is the limited budget for repairs and maintenance of roads.
Road maintenance is not based on measurable objective criteria but on ad hoc demands of elected representatives, stated the study.
Many a time, a bad road (especially in fringe areas) remains neglected while maintenance is carried out at locations where it is not required and the result is wasteful expenditure and deterioration of serviceability level of the overall road network, the study found.
The only solution is developing a comprehensive Road Asset Management System which will encompass the NMC assets, including roads, drains and related infrastructure, their condition (based on measurable technical criteria), its resources (budget, manpower, machinery) and contractor (quality of the work, history, reputation).
The NMC will not require permanent staff and hence, no need for additional investment as it can be done within the domain of the Smart City project.
About the implementation of the system, the study suggested geotagging of all roads, converting all roads into manageable road pieces of uniform sizes, assigning unique ID to each road, quantitative measurement to judge the quality of road in terms of defects and defect parameters, design algorithm to estimate repair cost based on defects and multidimensional analysis based on location, time, defect and contractor.
VNIT has offered to develop the road severity index to help prioritize restoration and simultaneously help to strategize repair work within limited budget.
Mayor Sandip Joshi appreciated VNIT’s study and said if NMC implements it then taxpayers’ money will be saved. “Next week a meeting between the premier institute and NMC’s chief engineer Ulhas Debadwar will be convened,” he said.