Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation has decided to carry out road repairs in Salt Lake.
Deputy mayor Anita Mondal, who is in charge of the road repairs department, said that they will carry out extensive road repairs that are now battered with potholes and craters.
“We will scrape out the battered layer first and then start repairing the roads,” said Mondal.
According to her the funds for road repairs has arrived and tenders have been called out as well.
Prior to this, the councillors of all 41 wards that comprise the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation had been asked to conduct a survey on bad roads in their respective wards and submit the findings by the end of this month.
The decision to carry out the survey was taken at a board of councillors meeting held several months back and is aimed to carry out “patchwork repairs on an urgent basis,” a senior civic body official said.
The corporation had taken a decision to allot Rs 10 lakh to each ward to carry out these patchwork repairs, a senior official of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation's roads said.
This newspaper had reported on multiple occasions about the bad state of roads in Salt Lake and it’s adjoining areas that are putting thousands of motorists as well as pedestrians at risk of accidents everyday.
In Salt Lake, giant craters and potholes have formed In all three sectors of the township and several roads resemble the Martian landscape.
The movement of vehicles over the years has also made things worse and in several places the asphalt layer has completely disintegrated.
As a result of this, the brickwork of the roads is exposed in multiple areas and in several places sharp edges of the bricks stick out that make it extremely difficult for motorists to drive or ride a two-wheeler on the roads.
One of the worst stretches of the roads in the township is in front of Salt Lake stadium’s gate number 1 near the Purbachal housing complex.
Here there are at least a dozen craters that are not only wide but extremely deep turning the entire stretch into a driver's nightmare
This is one of the busiest roads in the township as It leads into Salt Lake from the Hyatt Intersection on the EM Bypass.
The situation is similar in places like Baguiati, Kestopur and Narayanpur where nearly every road is battered with potholes.
A section of residents The Telegraph Salt Lake spoke to said that instead of relying on the age-old patchwork method the civic body should have carried out more thorough repairs.
"It has been several years now since the corporation relaid road surfaces. Patchwork repairs often create bumps and wear off easily," said Soumyadeep Chakraborty, a techie who lives in Salt Lake and drives to his workplace and back home everyday.
Write to saltlake@abp.in