Craters and potholes across the roads of Salt Lake and its areas off VIP Road continue to increase in size and depth that put thousands of residents as well as commuters at risk of losing life or limb every single day.
The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation (BMC) is in charge of providing civic services, including carrying out road repairs across Salt Lake and places off the VIP Road like Kestopur, Baguiati, Teghoria, Kaikhali among other places.
For the past seven years, the BMC has failed to completely relay the roads and has been dependent completely on patchwork repairs—a layer of bitumen that is laid over craters — as a quick-fix solution.
Several engineers at both the BMC and other government agencies that carry out road repairs including the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) and public works department (PWD) said patchwork is only done as a temporary solution.
A Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority engineer said a road surface laid with mastic asphalt or concrete easily outlasts a surface redone with bitumen. Mastic asphalt could be laid in a short span of time and even in between rains.
But the civic authorities keep choosing patchwork as a means to maintain roads that eventually turn back into battered state frequently. Around Rs 3.8 crore is required to build one kilometre of mastic asphalt road. Though the cost is many times higher than patchwork repairs, it evens out in the long run because mastic asphalt doesn’t require frequent repairs.
Several contractors that are entrusted with the task of maintaining the roads in these areas said they have not been receiving payments for patchwork repairs on time.
“We have not received the payments for repairing the roads for the last couple of years. This year some roads received patchwork treatment ahead of Durga Puja. We haven’t received the payment for that as well yet. We cannot keep investing and wait to get payments,” said a contractor who asked not to be named.
On Sunday, this newspaper drove around Salt Lake and the roads looked like what they were before repairs. Motorists headed to Salt Lake from EM Bypass are greeted by a series of deep craters right at the EM Bypass-Broadway intersection in front of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) Complex.
In front of City Centre Salt Lake, the traffic police have placed guardrails and cones to ensure cars and two-wheelers don’t drive into these broken patches unsuspectingly.
Both the Bidhannagar College-bound and the Central Park-bound flank of the road in front of the mall have multiple potholes and undulations with jagged edges.
The situation is similar near FE Island where the entire blacktop has worn away. The roads inside all the blocks of Sectors I, II and III, too, are in a rundown state.
The roads that got patchwork repairs before the Pujas are again riddled with craters and potholes. The layers applied during the repair did not even last a month.
Mayor Krishna Chakraborty said they would carry out a series of patchwork repairs once more.
“We will carry out patchwork repairs as we have very limited resources as of now,” said Chakraborty.
The mayor said that she was aware that these repairs did not last even a month.
The BMC has sent a Rs 140- crore road-repair proposal for all its 41 wards in Salt Lake and Rajarhat to the state urban development department for approval, the mayor added.