The Salt Lake civic body has sought Rs 3 crore per ward from the state government for thorough road repairs.
The civic body now has enough funds only for patchwork repairs on the township’s battered roads.
Repairs are already underway in several parts of Salt Lake, including at the Karunamoyee intersection, but the repair teams are doing patchwork repairs.
Patchwork repairs are a quick-fix solution where a layer of bitumen is poured over craters and later levelled out.
Roads across all three sectors of the township are in bad shape. Several engineers from the civic body and from the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA), which is in charge of maintaining New Town’s roads, said patchwork repairs tend to wear out fast. The only long-term solution would be to relay the blacktop completely by scraping off the old asphalt surface, they said.
Metro has reported on several occasions about the crumbling road network in Salt Lake and how patchwork repairs have worn out within a few days of roads being repaired.
Anita Mondal, deputy mayor of Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, who is also the mayoral council member in charge of road repairs, said with the funds they had they would only be able to afford patchwork repairs and more thorough repairs only on the township’s busier roads.
“Given the funds we have in our hands we will only be able to afford patchwork repairs. Relaying an entire road surface is expensive and the amount of money we have won’t allow for it. We will carry out more thorough repairs once we get more funds,” she said.
Metro drove around Salt Lake on Wednesday and saw patchwork repairs being done on a stretch that leads to City Centre from the Karunamoyee intersection.
Here, bitumen had been poured over potholes and a road roller had been used to level it out. However, the result was that the entire surface remained bumpy and loose stone chips were strewn across the width of the road. Bikes and cars tend to skid on loose stonechips when brakes are applied and it is not uncommon for riders and drivers to lose control of their vehicles while driving on such surfaces.
Over the past eight years, the Salt Lake civic body has kept banking on patchwork for road repairs and no road has been relaid with a new layer of asphalt.
Residents of Salt Lake said patchwork repairs that had been done a few days back in some places, including the stretch in front of the Banchharam’s sweet shop in Sector 3, have already started developing potholes and some sections have subsided in places.
An NKDA 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 civic authorities keep choosing patchwork over other options.
Around Rs 4.2 crore is required to build a kilometre of mastic asphalt road. Though the cost is many times more than patchwork repairs, it evens out in the long run because mastic asphalt does not require frequent repairs.
The engineer said: “A concrete road is three times costlier to build compared to bitumen but lasts two decades. The longevity of a bitumen stretch, on the other hand, is a few months. A mastic asphalt road costs double and lasts around five years.”
The civic body has asked for an aid of Rs 3 crore per ward for road repairs. Engineers at the corporation said the complete relaying of roads in smaller wards could be done with this amount.