U, S and O (barely visible) are the only alphabets remaining of a bus-stop sign painted on a road near Salt Lake’s tank number 10. The surface has peeled off Pictures by Snehal Sengupta
Craters are back on Salt Lake’s roads as the the bitumen laid a week before Durga Puja as a quick-fix solution was washed away by the late October rain.
Potholes dot all major roads of the township, prompting residents to question the wisdom of carrying out patchwork repairs.
In Calcutta, patchwork has come to mean levelling craters or laying a thin bituminous layer on a ragged stretch. An official of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation said it was the preferred mode of repairs since the sanction for an overhaul often came late.
Another official of the civic body was more forthcoming. Officials do not stand to gain much from a road that lasts long, he suggested.
So, what should essentially be a short-term measure is often the first and most preferred choice for officials.
“A road surface laid by mastic asphalt or concrete easily outlasts a surface redone with bitumen, which wears out faster. Every time one bags a contract for repair, he or she has to grease several palms in order to work peacefully. The results are there for everyone to see,” the official said.
The economics of building roads makes mastic asphalt a better choice in the long run, an engineer of the road repairs department of the Bidhannagar Muncipal Corporation admitted.
Around Rs 3.8 crore is required to create a 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.
“A concrete road is three times costlier to build compared with a bitumen stretch of the same length 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 engineer said.
A contract for patchwork doesn’t have a built-in guarantee period, an engineer of the Salt Lake civic body said. “Cracks or craters can reappear if it rains the very next day and nobody will be liable,” the engineer added.
Tapas Chatterjee, the mayoral council member in charge of roads at the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, admitted that patchwork repairs had been carried out just a week before Puja. He said repairs had been stalled following Sabyasachi Dutta’s resignation as mayor and the subsequent impasse over the selection of his successor.
“We did not have the time to shut down entire roads and relay them. So, we did patchwork, which is time-saving. We will carry out thorough repairs soon,” said Chatterjee.
Several engineers of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, the Salt Lake civic body and the Nabadiganta Industrial Township Authority, the civic agency of Sector V, said even mastic asphalt could be laid in a short span of time.
An engineer pointed out that 2.5km-long Broadway, which connects Salt Lake with the Bypass, was laid with mastic asphalt within a week, ahead of the FIFA Under-17 World Cup in September 2017, which was held at the Salt Lake stadium. The six-lane road is still smooth and has no craters.
However, Third Avenue, which had undergone patchwork repairs before Puja, has become unmotorable. Thousands of office-goers, students and others headed to Sector V have to endure a bone-rattling ride every day because of the craters on a 1.5km stretch of Third Avenue.
On Tuesday, a scooterist fell off his two-wheeler when it skidded after he applied the brakes on the road.
