A trip through New Town is now a bumpy affair as roads are dotted with craters. In some places large portions of roads have subsided, forcing the authorities to shut them down.
All three action areas witnessed prolonged waterlogging last month. Several places in Action Areas II and III had remained flooded for at least a week after the heavy showers in September.
New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) engineers blame the waterlogging on the poor condition of the roads. “Water seeps through a flooded road and weakens the soil below, leading to cave-ins,” an engineer said.
The Telegraph drove around all the three action areas of New Town on Tuesday.
The Major Arterial Road, a 10.5km-long six-lane artery that links New Town with Salt Lake on one end and the airport on the other, is in bad shape.
Water dripping from the airport-New Garia Metro stations under-construction have led to craters at several places.
To counter this, NKDA has carried out brick patchwork on the MAR that had been laid with mastic asphalt.
However, the surface of the patchwork repairs is higher than the road surface, resulting in bumpy rides.
One of the worst-affected areas in New Town happens to be right in front of the Eden Court Housing Complex in New Town’s Action Area III, where a 600-m long stretch of the service road leading to the condominium has caved in at multiple places.
The portion resembles a huge sinkhole and is deep enough for cars to fall through.
To prevent accidents bamboo fences have been erected and road markers have been placed around the sinkhole.Deviant Gupta, a resident of Tata Eden Court, said the service lane in front of their complex was waterlogged for days on end in September.
“A few days after the water subsided we saw that the road had caved-in at multiple places. We notified the authorities and they put up bamboo fencing to prevent accidents. Fortunately there have been no accidents yet but even the bamboo barricades are quite difficult to spot at night,” said Gupta.
Several craters have also formed in front of the Elita Garden Vista and the Sukhobrishti Housing Complex in Action Area III.
Cars and bikes headed to the complexes were spotted struggling to negotiate the pothole-ridden stretches.
To add to the residents’ and commuters’ woes, puddles had formed in most of the potholes, making it almost impossible to spot them from a distance.
On Tuesday, The Telegraph spotted several bikers zig-zagging to avoid potholes on the Sector V-bound flank of the Major Arterial Road.
NKDA chairman Debashis Sen said they had carried out “herring-bine brick patchwork repairs” as an emergency measure and all the roads would be repaired once the weather improved.“We need a dry spell of more than two weeks to carry out the repairs,” Sen said on Tuesday.