Potholes and defunct street lights plague roads in Salt Lake. The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation has started repairs but the progress is slow.
Police have been left with no option but to place guardrails and traffic cones around potholes to prevent accidents.
Around six accidents caused by potholes are reported from Salt Lake every day, an officer in the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate said.
“No road in Salt Lake is devoid of potholes. We have been trying to prevent accidents by placing guardrails and traffic cones on bad stretches. On several stretches the street lights don’t work, making it dangerous to drive after dusk,” a senior officer in the commissionerate’s traffic wing said.
Not just the main roads, the lanes inside the blocks, too, plunge into darkness after sundown.
The road which connects Calcutta University’s Salt Lake campus to AMRI Hospitals Salt Lake does not have a single functioning street light and is dotted with potholes.
The entire stretch of 500m plunges into darkness after sundown. The road linking the CU campus with Canal Bank Road is in a similar state.
Several parts of Broadway, an arterial road that cuts through the township and connects it with the Bypass, have long stretches where street lights do not function. The situation is similar on First Avenue, which connects Salt Lake with Ultadanga.
One of the worst affected stretches — both for potholes and defunct street lights — is Eastern Drainage Canal Road, which links Salt Lake with the Bypass at the Chingrighata crossing. Lampposts are installed at a gap of 20 to 25m along all roads and lanes in the 52 blocks of the township.
On Eastern Drainage Canal Road, too, the placement of streetlights follows this plan. However, across the entire stretch of 6km, only a handful work properly.
Many residents of Salt Lake told The Telegraph they had requested the civic authorities a number of times to start the repairs, but the pleas fell on deaf ears.
A senior official of the Bidhannnagar Municipal Corporation’s road repairs department said they had already finished a survey identifying the bad stretches and repairs would start soon.
The cables for the street lights are maintained by the West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Limited, which supplies the power. A WBSEDCL official said the supply lines to the street lights were fine as they had conducted a check recently.