A cratered stretch of road between the EE island and the FE island in Salt Lake is witnessing minor accidents and vehicle breakdowns on almost a daily basis.
The 450m-long stretch of Fourth Avenue has the Bethune College hostel, Jaideep Mukherjee Tennis Academy and Bidhannagar Municipal School along it. It is frequented by school and college students and those headed to the tennis academy.
Earlier this week, a father-son duo on a Scooty had a narrow escape when the two-wheeler’s front wheel fell into a crater. Arunava Shil lost control of the vehicle and fell on the road with his son Amrit, a Class IX student.
They were headed back home after buying stationery from the GD Block market.
“I was riding at a very slow pace as the entire road has deep ruts and huge craters. I lost control after the front wheel of my Scooty hit one of the craters and we crashed. Both of us had our helmets on and luckily we just escaped with minor cuts and bruises. I shudder to think what could have happened had there been a vehicle just behind us,” Shil, a resident of Purbachal Housing Complex, said.
This newspaper has been frequently reporting about the sorry state of Salt Lake’s roads.
The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, which is in charge of providing civic services in the township, had done precious little to repair the roads before the onset of the monsoon.
Many of the roads in Salt Lake are battered and increasingly resembling dirt tracks as the blacktop has eroded.
The 450m-long stretch between EE and FE islands is peppered with potholes, which are deep and have a layer of stone chips around them. The wheels of the vehicles passing over the stretch tend to lose grip and skid once the brakes are pressed.
The entire road is extremely risky for motorists as the deep craters can result in one losing control of the two-wheeler if not ridden with extreme caution.
Roads across the township are in a similar bad shape.
An official of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation admitted road repairs have been extremely slow.
“It is very likely that the state of the roads will wor-sen as rain has started and repairs are yet to begin on several stretches,” the official said.