Rain is here and although Calcutta has registered a deficit till now, the showers have worsened the state of Salt Lake’s already battered roads.
On Sunday, Metro took a bone-jarring drive through all three sectors of the township where not a single road is devoid of potholes and craters barring stretches of the Broadway that connects EM Bypass with Salt Lake.
However, at the crossing of EM Bypass and Broadway in front of the Sports Authority of India Complex, both the Salt Lake-bound and the EM-Bypass-bound flank of the Broadway are peppered with large craters that force motorists to reduce the speed of their vehicles.
This results in extremely slow-moving traffic on both flanks of one of the main entry and exit points of Salt Lake.
In Sector I, parts of First Avenue have completely disintegrated near Baisakhi Island.
While sharp-edged bricks — the remnants of the road’s base layer — jut out dangerously, the entire road has sand and stone chips lying around that not only rock cars and bikes but the wheels also tend to skid on the slippery surface of the road.
In Sector II, a stretch of road that connects Tank number 9 island with the Sech Bhavan has several large and deep potholes. Udaychal Tourist Lodge is on this stretch.
Stretches of the road in front of the Calcutta Heart Clinic have subsided creating dips that unsettle vehicles that drive over them.
In Sector III, Canal Bank Road near the Eastern Drainage Canal, which connects several Salt Lake blocks with EM Bypass at the Chingrighata crossing, has craters and broken plastic speed breakers at regular intervals.
When asked about the state of the roads in the township, a senior official of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation’s roads department said the process of calling tenders had been delayed because of some “technical reasons”.
“We had called out a tender for repairs of some roads but that had to be scrapped,: the official said.
Sabyasachi Dutta, the chairman of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, said the roads must be repaired immediately and without any excuses.
“It is high time that something is done about the roads,” he said.